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"WITH A. KOAK CAKLO DASHKD AT HIM. 



{See p<ige22.) 



GREAT CATS 1 HATE MET 



Adventures in Two Hemispheres 




WILLIAM HTHOMSON 

Author of "On the War-Path with Kit Carson," etc. 



Sixty Illustrations by 
JAY HAMBIDGE and WILLIAM A. McCULLOUGH 



bit 21 tti»'- , <^ " 






BOSTON 

ALPHA PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1S96 



t^ 



Copyright, 1896 

by 

Alpha Publishing Company 



AH rights reserved 



THE PINKHAM PRESS 

287 Congress Street, Boston 






WF 




^/^^Ziec.^...^ ^^'^^U'^,^**^^^ 



AUTHOR'S NOTE. 

BORN and reared in what was in that long ago 
time the backwoods of Canada, I enjoyed in 
my boyhood days exceptional advantages for be- 
coming acquainted with the habits of all the vari- 
ous kinds of wild animals, birds and fishes then 
abounding in the forests and streams of that 
country. 

As any other strong, healthy boy, so situated, 
would naturally do, I very early became exceed- 
ingly fond of ont-door sports,and bythe time Iwas 
ten or twelve years old was a quite successful lit- 
tle trapper, hunter and angler — and became more 
and more expert in my accomplishments the big- 
ger I grew. 

While still a very young man— having mean- 
time, through practice, attained to really re- 
markable skill in the use of rifle, rod and gun— 
I was fortunately afPorded the opportunity of ex- 
tensive travel, not only in Northern, Western, Cen- 



8 AUTHOR'S NOTE. 

tral and South America, but also in far-away Aus- 
tralia and many other countries and islands of 
the eastern hemisphere. 

In all my wanderings, whether prospecting for 
gold or engaged in commerce, I never neglected 
any possible chance for indulging in my favorite 
pastime of hunting; and this, often carried out in 
the haunts of dangerous game, naturally led to 
many exciting adventures and experiences. Some 
of these, relating to the Cat Family, are recorded 
in this little book. 

In throwing these various adventures together, 
I have followed as nearly as possible the actual 
course of my journeying from one country to 
another, so as to form the whole into a sort of 
continuous narrative, though in one case I jump 
from Brazil to Texas in order to bring in some 
relevant incidents which occurred long after the 
one related in the first part of the Brazilian story. 

As the contents of this little volume are plain, 
unvarnished facts, possibly grown as well as 
young people may find entertainment in the peru- 
sal and, perhaps, come upon some things in regard 
to the American and foreign felidae not before 
brought to their notice. 



AUTHOR'S NOTE. 9 

Lacking, on the day I write these lines, but one 

month of completing my seventy-second year, it 

may well be that I shall not live to see this book 

published; yet I submit it to a generous public 

without fear of hostile criticism, because, from its 

utterly unpretentious character, it is not open to 

such. 

W. THOMSON. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. p^gg. 

My First Great Cat 19 



CH.U:»TER II. 
A Bobcat and a Pigeox-Pie 33 

CHAPTER III. 
Little Manuel and the Jaguar 45 

CHAPTER lY. 
The " Little Spotted Tiger " 62 

CHAPTER Y. 
A Black Lion 73 

CHAPTER YI. 
A Day in a Tree 86 

CHAPTER YII. 
My First Lion-Hunt 99 

CHAPTER YIII. 
A South African Leopard 114 

CHAPTER IX. 
A Family of Tigers . 126 

11 



12 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTEK X. P^GB. 

How I Mi:t the True Panther 140 

CHAPTER XI. 
A Black Leopard 152 

CHAPTER XII. 
Two Girls AND A Tortoise-Shell Tiger 168 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 











PAGE 


*' With a Roar Carlo Dashed at Him " . 






Frontis. 


Portrait of the Autliov 






• 


6 


Head of Puma • 








19 


Eye of Puma 






• 


21 


Paw and Claw of Puma 








21 


A Puma and Her Cub- 






• 


23 


Not Very Happy 








26 


Sleeping Pumas 








29 


Skull of Puma ...... 








32 


Head of Lynx 








34 


A Canadian Bobcat 








37 


*' I Was Knocked Flat on My Back '' 








. 39 


The Jaguar's Muscular Back . 








. 45 


The Jaguar's Paw in Repose . 








. 48 


Action of Jaguar's Claw .... 








. 49 


The Morning Bath 








. 51 


" It Let Go of the Gun and Sprang Savagely a 


it Me 


" 




. 55 


Jaguar and Monkeys 








. 59 


Head of Ocelot . . . • • 








62 


Ocelots Hunting 








. 64 


Crouched for Springing .... 








. 66 


*' Another Actor Appeared upon the Scene " 

13 








. 67 



1^ ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE. 

Piteously Mewing . . 69 

The Last of the Little Spotted Tiger 72 

Head of Black Lion, Side Yiew 73 

" Uttered an Appalling Human-Like Shriek " ... 75 

" Bounded High in the Air" 77 

Head of Black Lion, Front View . . . . . .80 

On the Trail 81 

At Bay . . . ' . 84 

Head of Peccary 86 

" Two Slowly-Advancing Lines of Wave-Like Motion " . 88 

They Descended on the Peccary 89 

"Treed" 91 

" One Old Grizzled Peccary " 93 

" Its Mate Leaped " 95 

Head of Male Lion .99 

Lioness and Cubs 101 

A Lion at Lunch 103 

Stealing on Its Prey 107 

" The Lion Dashed Out of Cover " 109 

"Defiantly Growling" 112 

An African Leopard 115 

The Busy Leopard 117 

" Harshly Screaming " 118 

•' A Tremendous Leap " . .119 

"Mbengo Slashed at Him" 121 

The Tigress 129 

" Maddened by the Storm of Fire " 133 

Head of Panther 140 

The Panther Hiding 141 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 15 

PAGE. 

*' A Shrill, Snarling Scream " 143 

" It Sprang to Another Tree " 145 

Panthers at Play 149 

" A Low-Crouching Black Object " ..... 155 

" Arched up Its Back " 157 

"We Could See the Murderous Beast Quite Plainly" . . 159 

" Began to Leap and Frisk About " 171 

" Frank Gordon and His Trained Arab Burst from the En- 
circling Wood " 175 

In the Tree . 177 



GREAT CATS 1 HAVE MET 




GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

CHAPTER I. 

MY FIRST GREAT CAT. 

Y first interview witli a wild mem- 
ber of the large and dangerous 
family of the felidse was in 1833. 
I was onl}^ nine years old then, 
and it was considered quite an 
adventure for a little boy. 

My home v, as in the backwoods of upper Canada, 
now Ontario, where bears, wolves and deer were 
plentiful; but for years no one had seen a speci- 
men of the more savage creature I was to meet. 

Farmers' clearings were not very extensive in 
those parts at this early period, and our cattle 
were allowed to roam for pasturage in the great 
woods. 

19 



HEAD OF PUMA. 



20 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

One afternoon I was sent out to look up our 
cows. As usual, my dog, a powerful deerhound 
called Carlo, went with me. This dog was abso- 
lutely fearless. He would attack anything in the 
shape of a wild beast. He bore on his body many 
honorable scars, as mementos of his rash fights 
with wolves and bears. 

Well, we two, careless and happy, went gaily 
along the forest paths, and at last heard the dis- 
tant tinkle of the cow-bell. At the same moment 
we heard a strange, ijiteous cry. It seemed to me 
the voice of a woman or a child in dreadful dis- 
tress. But Carlo was of a different opinion. In- 
stead of showing sympathy, he set up his bristles, 
his tail stiffened, his eyes gleamed, and he kept 
close by my side. 

The wailing cry came again and again. It ap- 
peared to come from a grove of oaks about a hun- 
dred yards from the path. I felt sure that some 
little girl, out picking berries, perhaps, had got 
lost and was sobbing and moaning from fright. 
So I shouted as loud as I could to encourage her, 
and made for the grove, in spite of Carlo's protests. 

No intelligible voice answered my halloo. Then 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



21 




EYE OF PUMA. 



I felt certain that the lost child must be badly 
hurt, since she did not come to meet us. 

On the edge of the grove stood 
a very large oak with wide- 
spreading branches, the lowest 
not more than twenty feet from 
the ground; and, very strangely, 
the half-sobbing, half-whining, 
cry seemed, as we came near, to come from 
among these low limbs. 

My hound, always very gentle and pleasant with 
children, seemed to have changed his nature. He 
grew more and more frantic with rage, and when 
we got almost under the tree he stopped short, sat 
back on his haunches, and looked up towards its 
top, howling fiercely. 

Following his upward gaze, I myself then saw, 

crouched on a big limb, 
a full-grown puma a beast 
I had heard some of our 
neighbors call a "painter,^' 
others a catamount, oth- 
ers a panther— though there is no true panther 
in America. I knew the creature at a glance, for I 




PAW AST) CLA.W OF PUMA. 



22 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

had seen a specimen of his kind in a traveling 
menagerie, and my little knees shook nnder me. 

All at once, I remembered hearing hunters say 
that the "painter" sometimes cries like a person 
in pain on purpose to attract human i)rey within 
his reach — a fable, as these creatures, like their 
relatives, the domestic cats, moan and screech at 
times for reasons best known to themselves. 

This puma ceased his cries so soon as he saw us, 
and began to claw the bark of the tree, switch his 
tail and arch his back for a spring — whether at me 
or Carlo I don't know. I was almost numb with 
terror, but as the great tawny gray body shot 
downwards, I and the dog instinctively sprang to 
one side, and he missed both of us! 

After the nature of cats, when foiled in a first 
spring, he tried to sneak aw^ay; but with a roar 
Carlo dashed at him and fastened his teeth in 
his throat. The gallant hound was no match for 
such a foe; and though I saw the blood follow his 
grip, he w^as shaken off, and the puma in a moment 
had scurried up another tree. 

At this sight my courage returned. I knew at 
once exactly what to do. Like most country boys 




. pp^/^ll^^f^ 




T HA<->0»0*«v, 



A PUMA AND HER CUBS. 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 25 

of those days, I had flint, steel and punk in my 
pocket, and in fifteen minutes I had four good 
fires blazing around. Then, bidding Carlo keep 
watch, I ran home as fast as my little legs would 
carry me and told my father about the rare game 
I had "put up." 

Although he doubted that I had seen a real 
"painter," my father took dowm his flintlock rifle, 
seized his powder-horn and bullet pouch, and hur- 
ried back with me to the oak grove. 

The puma had gone high up into a lofty fork, 
and when we got sight of him was looking down 
at the dog, spitting and snarling, exactly as a 
house cat does when threatened by Tow^ser. 

My father waited until he got a fair view of his 
head, then he took aim, and at the crack of his 
rifle the savage cat came toppling down. 

He proved to be a very large male. My father 
measured him, and although sixty-one years have 
since passed away, I remember the measurements 
still. The length, from the point of the nose to 
the root of the tail, was four feet three inches; the 
tail itself, black-tipped, but not tufted, was two 
feet five inches; so the creature was six feet eight 
inches long. 



26 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



The largest of the claws were one and a third 
inches long, and their points were as sharp as 
needles; the animal keeps them withdrawn into a 
sort of sheath, which prevents them from blunt- 
ing. 

The upper part of the pelt Avas dull gray tinged 




NOT TERY HAPPY, 



with reddish brown, but my father said that when 
cold weather came the whole back always turned 
a soft uniform gray, while the throat and belly 
remained a dull white — about the color of un- 
bleached factory cotton. 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 27 

My father, besides having the fine pelt, got 
twenty dollars Provincial bounty, for the 
slaughter of the dangerous beast, out of which he 
gave me the largest sum I had ever possessed in 
my life. 

The puma is truly a terribly fierce animal, but 
I do not believe that as related by some writer, "a 
single one has been known to kill fifty sheep in 
one night r So shy a creature as the puma 
would not stay around the haunts of civilization 
for so long a time. Nor do these great cats, like 
dogs, kill sheep for the fun of it ! 

My father told me that the puma does not have 
a regular lair or home, as do most other wild cats, 
but roams from place to place. This maybe so, but 
I have known exceptions. Many years later, in 
the Rocky Mountains, I killed a female puma 
which was domiciled with her three cubs in a 
close den among the rocks, one evidently occupied 
for some time, as the floor Avas littered by cleanly- 
picked bones. 

The little puma kittens are extremely pretty 
creatures, marked by distinct dark lines and 
spots. 



28 GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 

In most English-written works on zoology, this 
beast is called cougar. I acquired the habit of 
calling it puma in Spanish America, where people 
so name it. Only the most illiterate of our own 
hunters now use the vulgar misnomer, "painter,'^ 
though nearly everyone in the Middle States and 
Canada, when speaking of the cougar, or puma, 
still refers to it as "panther," which it in nowise 
resembles; the latter cat, found only in Africa and 
Asia, is spotted, much like the true leopard. 

In Colorado and other parts of the West the 
creature is called "mountain lion," in Texas "Mex- 
ican lion," and in Mexico itself simply "lion"; but 
under whatever name known, it is everywhere the 
same treacherous, bloodthirsty, cowardly beast; 
its cowardice alone prevents it from being more 
often destructive to human life. 

Once, in Colorado, I very nearly became the 
prey of one of these fierce animals. While out 
one afternoon, prospecting for silver ores on the 
mountain side, I accidentally fell, just before 
dark, over a ledge about twelve feet high, alight- 
ing upon a pile of sharp broken granite in such a 
way as to dislocate my left elbow, break one jaw, 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



29 



knock out several teeth and cut my lips so that it 
was necessary to stitch them up inside and out. 
I was not rendered senseless, neither did I faint. 
The accident occurred at a lonely spot about three 
miles above Georgetown, in Clear Creek county, 
and no help was at hand; but I knew that half a 




SLEEPING PUMAS. 



mile or so further up the trail there was a miners' 
boarding-house. To this I determined, if possi- 
ble, to make my way, and so set off at once, walk- 
ing painfully along and marking my path by 
drops of still trickling blood. 



30 GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 

I had not gone far in the fast-gathering dusk 
when, hearing a slight rustling noise behind me, 
I turned about and found myself face to face with 
a full-grown cougar, or "mountain lion," sneak- 
ing stealthily on my track and evidently prepar- 
ing for a spring! 

Save for a strong and sharp hunting knife in 
my belt, I was entirely unarmed, even my light, 
prospecting pick having been left where I fell, 
and it seemed quite likely that my time to die 
had come. However, knowing the brute's cow- 
ardly nature, I drew my knife and with a loud 
shout rushed right at him; but, excited by the 
scent of blood, he didn't s(^are. Instead of turn- 
ing tail, he crouched low for a moment, then rose 
with a mighty bound as if bent upon descending 
on my head. As he came down I met him with 
the extended knife, which cut a great gash in one 
of his cheeks, but his weight and impetus bore 
me to the ground and I fell flat on my back, with 
him on top of me! 

Although my left arm w^as much disabled, I 
could still move it freely from the shoulder, and 
now I instinctively put it up to guard my throat. 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 31 

This movement saved my life; for the "lion" at 
once grasped the arm below the elbow, and by 
a lucky, or providential, thrust I severed his jug- 
ular vein and in dying he rolled off me. 

This was a very remarkable and wonderful es- 
cape, so wonderful indeed, that when I at last 
reached the boarding shanty, the men could not 
credit my story until they had gone down the 
trail and actually seen the dead cougar. 

One of the kind-hearted miners tramped off to 
Georgetown and brought up a carriage, in which 
I w^as taken safely down, and soon so skillfully 
patched up by two ex-army surgeons that in six 
weeks I was as w^ell as ever, though to this day 
my left arm is a little crooked and still bears the 
marks of the "lion's" tusks. 

Some years before this adventure while on a 
hunting trip in southern Texas, I caught a female 
cougar, "Mexican lion," in a rather singular man- 
ner. The beast and its mate had been for a long: 
time destroying stock on the ranch of a friend 
with whom I was staying, and all efforts to trap 
or shoot either of them had failed. Prompted by 
a recollection of something I had seen in India, 



32 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

I at last devised a plan whereby we captured the 
female robber alive, in a common fishnet. 

Afterward, while trying in vain to catch her 
mate, we secured a much more valuable prize — 
one that greatly surprised and delighted us. As, 
however, in the account of a jaguar adventure, 
I shall fully describe the methods employed in 
this curious and lucky experiment, I will not give 
the details here. 

This many-named great cat, the puma, or cou- 
gar, has the most extended range, I believe, of 
any of the American felidse — covering, indeed, 
nearly the whole continent, from Canada to Pata- 
gonia and from Maine to California. 




SKULL OF PUMA. 



CHAPTER 11. 

A BOBCAT AND A PIGEON-PIE. 

THE Canada lynx is known to many hunters 
in that country, as well as to those in the 
Lake States, as the "bobcat," and is the only cat 
1 ever saw^ — barring that of the Isle of Man — 
without a tail; to be exact, it does possess a bit 
of one, about an inch long. (Of course the lynx 
is not a very "great cat," yet it is quite big enough 
to be a dangerous enemy when so disposed.) 

Settled along the Credit River, a few miles 
from our farm, were considerable numbers of 
half-civilized Indians, and these people had a 
legend as to how the lynx happens to be so nearly 
tailless. 

The Great Spirit, so this Indian story run, was 
in the habit of coming down to earth on moonlit 
nights, to watch over the slumbers of the first- 
born son of a favorite warrior. A troop of lynxes, 

33 



34 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



roaming through the adjacent treetops, one night, 
set up a series of horrible mocking cries and pur- 
posely woke the babe. This made the Great 
Spirit wrathy, and he pronounced instant death 

upon all cats of 
that variety; but, 
on tlie warrior's 
plea that his peo- 
ple would thereby 
be deprived of 
much val u a b 1 e 
fur, he changed 
the sentence to 
amputation of the 
greater part of the 
animaPs tail — 
and ever since, all lynxes have been born with 
that mark of disgrace. 

The lynxes are true tree-cats, fond of a bird- 
and-egg diet; but the first lynx I ever saw, I saw 
on the ground. When I was about ten years old, 
T became the proud possessor of a light, flintlock, 
single-barreled gun, xjaid for by my own earnings 
in the way of mink, musk-rat and raccoon skins; 




HEAD OF LYNX. 



GREAT CAT^' / HAVE MET. 35 

and for so young a boy, I was beginning to shoot 
pretty well. 

That year we were visited during wheat har- 
vest by prodigious flocks of wild pigeons, and one 
Saturday afternoon my father gave me leave to 
go out with my gun and try to get birds enough 
for a great Sunday pot-pie; counting indoor ser- 
vants and all, our household numbered eighteen 
persons. 

Away I went in great glee to the big beech 
woods. I had with me four ounces of powder and 
a pound of number six shot. This would make 
about sixteen charges, and should bring me 
twenty-four pigeons, for it would be hard luck 
indeed if I couldn't now and then bring down 
several at a shot. Shooting, boy fashion, only at 
such birds as were perching on tree-limbs or hop- 
ping along the ground, I soon had fourteen nice 
fat ones. These I strung by their beaks on a piece 
of twine and hung the bunch on a sapling, and 
then went on to hunt for more. 

Following along an old cattle path, I got 
twenty-one pigeons in nine shots. Then I found 
my ammunition was gone. I had forgotten my 



36 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

father's orders: "Never, while hunting, leave your- 
self without one charge for your gun." 

So far as the pot-pie was concerned, I already 
had pigeons enough to make one that might feed 
half a hundred men; but what if in the fast-ap- 
proaching dusk I should run on some big game 
—a wolf, for instance! Such a creature might 
I^ossibly relish a fat little boy! 

But no wolf appeared, nor did I even hear one 
howl as I hurried back along the darkening trail. 

Coming to the sapling, where I had left my first 
string of pigeons, I found the birds gone. Next 
moment I saw that they were being devoured by 
two animals lying on the ground a few yards 
away, and which, in the gray shades of evening, 
I could not have seen at all but for their glaring 
eyes. The creatures didn't look very savage or 
very large, as they lay there amicably sharing 
my birds. 

"The thieving raccoons!" I muttered, at the same 
time clubbing my gun and stepping up, thinking 
to scare them away and recover some of my 
pigeons. 

But w^hen I got within three feet, I myself was 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



the scared one! Instead of harmless 'coons, the 
beasts were full-grown lynxes! I knew them by 
their short, powerful legs, big feet, the pencils of 
hair on the tips of their ears, and the absence of 
tails. Then didn't I regret my neglect of a hunt- 
er's first duty — to keep his gun loaded ! 

But though knowing a "bobcat" to be more 




A lANADIAX BOBCAT. 



than a match for the best dog, I had never heard 
of even a child being attacked by one, and I had 
no notion of letting this pair rob me of my pot- 
pie. 



38 GREAT CATS 1 HAVE MET. 

Yelling as loud as I could, I struck with all my 
might at the cat nearest. My gun came down on 
its back and, to my great surprise, disabled it. 
Had I known the back w^as this creature's most 
vulnerable part, I could not have made a more 
judicious blow. 

I got no chance to make a second, however; for 
the moment the moan of its mate rang out, the 
other lynx uttered a shrill snarl, and dashed at 
my breast. Though a strong, heavy boy for my 
age I was knocked flat on my back, and the mad- 
dened cat came down on top of me. He was a 
big fellow, and must have weighed fifty pounds. 

Strange to say, all my fright disappeared then. 
A curious reckless kind of numbness came over 
me. I actually did not feel any pain as the beast 
sunk his long teeth into my arm which I had 
instinctively raised to shield my face — teeth three 
times as long as those of the domestic cat. I did 
not know until afterwards that the curved claws 
of its front feet had torn through my coat collar, 
waistcoat and shirt, and mangled both my 
shoulders. 

How long the furious creature had been tear- 




I WAS KXOCKKD FLAT ON MY BACK. 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 41 

ing at me I do not know — it might have been 
thirty seconds or five minutes when suddenly I 
saw a stream of fire and heard the report of a gun. 
Then I knew nothing more until I found myself 
on a sofa at home, and saw on the floor before me 
a great heap of pigeons and the gray, black- 
flecked pelts of both lynxes! 

My father, who had strolled out with his rifle 
to meet me, had come upon the scene in the nick 
of time, and after hurriedly skinning the bobcats 
had carried me and my trophies home. 

I was not seriously hurt. The very next day 
I helped demolish the biggest pigeon pot-pie I 
ever saw. 

Afterwards, as I grew bigger and learned more 
about hunting, I occasionally came across and 
killed a lynx — generally in the deep gloom of the 
forest or, as the shade of night was beginning to 
fall, in more open places. 

Sometimes, though rarely, these fierce crea- 
tures came quite close to our outbuildings in 
search of prey. Just before dark one evening 
early in April, I was going with Carlo at my heels 
past the sheep-fold, when a large lynx scrambled 



42 GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 

over the fence from the inside, holding a new- 
born lamb in his mouth, and came down not six 
feet from us. I had not even a club with me, 
but the bold robber had barely touched the 
ground when Carlo sprang forward, seized him 
by the throat and, though severely lacerated by 
those fearful claws, held bravely on until one of 
our men, hearing the outcry, ran out of the barn 
and despatched the savage beast with a pitch- 
fork. 

When I was thirteen years of age, we had in the 
house a very remarkable domestic cat — Pompey 
by name; a big black fellow and a mighty hunter, 
who did not by any means confine himself to the 
slaughter of rats and mice, but roamed over the 
fields and woods in search of other game. 

Pompey frequently killed chipmunks, red squir- 
rels, partridges and quails, also large gray and 
black squirrels, and brought all to the house. 
Once he killed a woodchuck nearly as heavy as 
himself and dragged it proudly into the kitchen. 
Yet Pompey never molested any of the barnyard 
fowls; and our pet canaries would perch fearlessly 
on his back and trill their little songs — evidently 
to Pompey's great delight. 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 43 

One day he pounced upon a big hawk, and 
twisted its head off, as it was in the act of rising 
from the ground with a chicken in its talons. 
Then he trailed the two birds, still locked to- 
gether, into the sitting-room — to be praised and 
petted for his gallant deed, which had been duly 
observed from the windows. 

This cat was thoroughly honest as well as 
brave. No matter how hungry he might be, he 
would never touch even a dish of cream or any 
tempting food, unless it were given him. 

But, alas! poor Pompey's discretion was less 
than his valor; hence his tragic and untimely end. 
One evening I was standing at the back-door, 
doing nothing in particular, when I saw our cat 
coming along with a black squirrel dangling from 
his mouth, and looking as pleased and happy as 
any lucky hunter ever did. 

Not far from the house there was a belt of scrub 
pine, left as a wind-break for a young orchard, 
which was very dense and dark. Pompey was 
coming along by this thicket and had got half 
way and w^as purring loudly to challenge my ad- 
miration, when a very large lynx sprang out of 



44 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET, 

the thick covert and, without touching the cat, 
seized upon the dead squirrel. 

Instead of dropping his prize and running away, 
as a more prudent cat would have done, Pompey 
rashly showed fight, and in ten seconds was as 
dead as that hero of antiquity after whom he was 
named. But he did not die unavenged; for I 
snatched the always loaded rifle from its pegs, 
crept softly round to the back of the grove, stole 
cautiously halfway through it, finally caught 
sight of the murdering thief humped up on a 
great log, and shot him as he was in the act of de- 
vouring his sneakingly-gotten booty. 

We youngsters had a funeral for poor Pompey, 
and probably he was quite as sincerely mourned 
as was the great Roman soldier. This little 
tragedy so vexed me that ever since I have actu- 
ally hated that especially cruel wildcat known as 
the lynx, or "bobcat." 



CHAPTER III. 



LITTLE MANUEL AND THE JAGUAR. 



T WAS still a young man when 
^ I met and slew my first jag- 
uar. 

During my lifetime I have 

killed, or helped kill, nine of 

these terrible creatures. Only 

one of them was in our country, 

in Texas; Texas is 

as far north as this 

cat ever comes. 

The jaguars are midway in size between the 

tiger and leopard, two of the worst cats, but 

they are much handsomer than either and quite 

as dangerous. 

I was visiting on the coffee plantation of a 
Portuguese gentleman in Brazil, about a hun- 
dred miles north of Rio Janeiro. Senhor Rinaldo 

45 




THE JAGUAR'S MUSCULAR BACK. 



4G GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

was a great sportsman, and his little son Manuel, 
about twelve years old, was a real little exjDert 
with fishing-rod and fowling-piece. It was need- 
ful there that even a little boy should know how 
to use a gun, for on every hand were dense vine- 
clad forests full of dangerous animals. 

One hot forenoon, after an expedition on the 
river for fish and wild fowl, Senhor Rinaldo de- 
cided to row up stream still further, to lunch on 
a piece of open ground kept clear of underbrush 
and trees for picnic purposes, a pleasant spot, 
round as a fairy's ring, covered with tropical flow- 
ers, and closely surrounded, even at the river- 
front, by thick forest. 

After the meal Avas over, Senhor Rinaldo and 
I dreamily smoked and rested in the shade. But 
Manuel was on the wing. Gun in hand, he flitted 
about among the dazzling flowers, picking such as 
he thought might be new to his beautiful young 
mother whom, in a curiously chivalrous way, he 
was wont to pet as if she had been a little sister. 

By and by the youngster had wandered quite 
across the glade. There he sat down to sort his 
flowers, in the edge of the forest. He was directly 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 47 

opposite US. Not for a moment, here so near us, 
did either of us imagine that any harm could be- 
fall the boy. But suddenly we both saw the little 
fellow spring to his feet, drop his half-arranged 
bouquet, throw up his gun, and fire at some 
object by us unseen. 

The shot was instantly followed by a snarling 
scream. Through the powder smoke we saw a 
brilliant streak of color dart in a curve from the 
dark trees and descend upon the boy. As he 
went down, he shouted: 

"O, papa! papa! the tiger! the tiger!" 

Kacing for life, we dashed across to the rescue. 
I, being the younger and more fleet of foot, got 
first to the scene, dreading to find it one of hor- 
ror. What I did see was this: Manuel stretched 
out alongside a decaying log, and over the log 
with its jaws fastened upon the gun, which the 
young hunter instinctively held before his face, 
sprawled the form of an enormous jaguar. 

The furious beast was bleeding from a wound 
in the back of its neck, where the charge of bird- 
shot, fired at close range, had cut a furrow. This 
red torrent streaming down over the boy's breast 



48 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

gave him all the appearance of being mortally 
wounded. To pass over the one hundred yards of 
space had probably occupied me twelve seconds 
and I knew that the cat had had time to dispatch 
the boy. I supposed my brave little friend was 
dead. 

When I was still about ten feet off, the jaguar 
let go of the gun and sprang at me, his retracted 
lips showing a full set of fangs, and his yellow- 
green eyes glowing like live coals. This was a 
foolish move on his part, for a heavy bullet from 
my gun at once entered the open mouth and 
passed through his head. He 
sank down at my feet, dead. 
-^^^^^^^^^k By this time, Senhor 

Kinaldo had come up, 
and in a moment he had 
THE JAGUAR'S PAW ^'^^^^ hls boy lu Ms arms. 
iNKEPosE. ^j^^^^ ^^ ^^ amaze- 

ment, we found that Manuel had not had even a 
scratch, thanks to the protecting log and to the 
gun-barrel which the beast's teeth had deeply in- 
dented. 

"Why, papa," said he, "Pm not a bit hurt, and 
mama's flowers are all safe!" 




GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



49 



A monster the jaguar was in size- 



feet long, counting in his rather short tail 



nearly ten 
but 

he was also one of the most beautifully-furred 
creatures I ever saw. The thick, lustrous fur 



^r^-^ 




was a rich fawn color, pro- 
fusely dotted by dark glossy 
rosettes, and in the center of 
each of these spots, which 
ran along his sides, was a 
smaller spot of light yellow. 
Across his breast and along 
his spine were several un- 
broken black streaks. 

There was great rejoicing 
on the plantation especially 
by ManueFs mother. Though 
the jaguar will not openly 
attack a man face to face, he will skulk for miles 
on the track of a person and at the first good 
chance make a spring; and he will attack and kill 
children in bright sunlight. 

Senhor Rinaldo^s Indians told me that on ac- 
count of the forests being so dense and dark, the 
jaguars wandered at all hours for prey, and that 



ACTION OF JAGUAR'S CLAW; 

a, OPEN FOR attack; b, 

SHEATHED, THE MUSCLES 
CONTRACTED, THE WEIGHT 
BORNE ON THE TOES. 



50 GREAT CATIS I HAVE MET. 

though monkeys were their favorite food, they 
often visited the plantations and destroyed colts, 
calves and even full-grown horses. 

While hunting one day in Nueces county, south- 
ern Texas, years after my world-wide wanderings 
were done, I had shot a large buck after a long 
chase. Being somewhat tired, I sat down to rest 
in the deep shade of a tree, before beginning to 
skin the deer, and carelessly fell fast asleep. 

After a while I was awakened by a strange 
noise. On opening my eyes, and peering through 
a fringe of intervening bushes, I found this noise 
to be the pleased purring of a pair of full-grown 
cougars, or "Mexican lions," who were about to 
help themselves to my game! 

The animals first lapped up such coagulated 
blood as had not soaked into the ground, and then 
the male cougar — a splendid-looking fellow — gal- 
lantly began to tear at and enlarge the wound 
in the buck's neck, so that his rather smaller and 
less strong consort might conveniently share in 
the feast. 

As this part of the deer was of no value to me, 
I sat quite still, intending to watch my unbidden 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



51 



guests' mode of feeding for a tew minutes before 
killing them, which I could, of course, do with my 
repeating rifle, whenever so inclined. But a less 
complacent spectator, heretofore modestly hid- 
den, suddenly assumed the part of an actor in the 
drama. 

The male "lion'^ had stripped back a considera- 
ble portion of the tough neck skin and with his 
mate was crouching down, tearing off morsels of 
the fresh venison, when 
a brilliantly-spotted form 
shot through the air from 
an adjacent tree-top ; and 
with a hoarse screeching 
cry an enormous jaguar 
alighted between the 
preoccupi e d 
gourmands, 
dashed both 




aside and 



THE MORNI>-G BATH. 



began himself to dine on my deer. . 

For, perhaps, a quarter minute, the two cou- 
gars stood spitting and snarling at the intruder 
as does an angry house cat at an intruding dog. 



52 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

Then, as if by a common impulse, both sprang, 
with arched bristling backs and swollen tails, 
upon the jaguar, each one fastening fangs and 
talons in his gorgeously-colored sides. 

The jaguar, twice as strong as either of his 
foes, and probably heavier than both combined, 
being thus disturbed at the beginning of his meal, 
rose with a terrific yell and shook off his rash 
assailants. Then, while his obliquely-set yellow- 
green eyes glowed with vengeful fires, he made 
a vindictive dash at the male cougar; but the agile 
creature bounded, like a rubber ball, high in air 
and came squarely down on the greater beast's 
shoulders. The female buried her teeth in his 
flank at the same moment. 

If the reader can imagine three maddened do- 
mestic cats — the size of one magnified 60-fold, of 
the other two 30-fold, and the united caterwaul- 
ing of all three multiplied by 100 — engaged in a 
fight to the death, he can form some idea of the 
sight and the sounds I saw and heard with horror. 

In vain the infuriated jaguar sought to again 
shake off the clinging pair. With appalling 
howls of pain and rage he rose again and again. 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 53 

despite the weight on his shoulders, almost up- 
right on his hind feet, and struck out in blind 
impotent fury with his fearfully armed forepaws; 
but he could not reach the perching male "lion," 
and the female clung tenaciously to his flank. 

In the midst of his pain and rage a happy 
thought seemed to strike the frantic beast; com- 
ing down on all-fours again, he twisted his lithe 
body half around, opened his huge jaws, and clos- 
ing them on the female cougar's head, just above 
the eyes, so exerted their tremendous power as to 
drive his great tusks through her skull to the 
brain and thus killed her. 

No whit cowed by the death of his mate, the 
male cougar now tore with his teeth more sav- 
agely than ever at the jaguar's neck, around 
which his forelegs clung, while his front claws 
were working havoc with the big beast's throat, 
and those of his hind feet were doing the same for 
his loins. 

By this time the jaguar had lost much blood 
and was evidently weakening, though still full 
of fight. Horribly shrieking, he reared and 
plunged, leaped with mighty bounds from side 



54 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

to side, threw himself down and rolled over and 
over with his tormentor, but could not loosen that 
deadly grip, and it seemed to me quite certain 
that he must shortly succumb to his compara- 
tively puny assailant. 

As nothing more could be learned by a further 
study of the combatants, I prepared to end the 
misery of both. So deeply, however, had the gal- 
lantry of the cougar excited my admiration that 
I would gladly have spared him had such a course 
been consistent with a proper regard for the pub- 
lic good. ' But he, being entirely uninjured, and 
hence capable of making a swift retreat to engage 
in further depredations upon the settlers' stock, 
must of necessity die first; and, as was so brave 
a warrior's due, his death should be a painless 
one. So, waiting until the struggling beasts were 
broadside to me, I took careful aim at a point 
midway between the cougar's eye and ear, and 
touched the trigger. So instantaneous was the 
effect that the brave old fellow never heard the 
rifle's report, much less knew what had so sud- 
denly reduced him to nothingness. Then the 
sorely-punished jaguar, finding himself free, at- 





IT t.KT GO OF TIIK Orx AND SI«IJAXG SAVAGELY AT ME. 



GREAT GATS I HAVE MET. 57 

tempted to sneak away, but a second bullet 
pierced his great round skull, and he sank down 
dead, with no further motion than a slight rising 
and falling of his glossy fur. 

I had done a famous afternoon's work: a fat 
buck, not in the least damaged as to hindquarters 
and head, an unusually large jaguar, and a pair 
of fine "Mexican lions" being a reward that might 
well repay a whole week of hunting. 

It was in Nueces county, too, that I planned and 
carried out the extraordinary netting feats al- 
luded to in the story of the pumas. The rancher, 
at whose house I was staying, had lost a number 
of young cattle and several colts, supposedly 
through the ravages of what he called "Mexican 
lions," though, as will be shown, these great cats 
were not the only ones to blame. Every exertion 
had been made to find and destroy the beasts, but 
they were so cunning and wary that none of the 
hunters could even catch sight of them. 

One morning, while my host was grumbling at 
his hard luck, I happened to notice, in a loft over- 
head, a long seine, which had been used during 
the river's spring floods to net fish. This seine 



58 GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 

suggested to me a way by which one might cap- 
ture the unknown marauders, and though my 
friend at first ridiculed the idea I soon convinced 
him of its perfect feasibility. 

So, that same afternoon, we took the net, and 
a lamb for bait, out to a narrow ravine leading 
from the hills, on whose bottom were numerous 
tracks of cougar or some other kind of big cat. 

The seine was about twelve feet wide and thirty 
yards long. We divided it in the middle and 
twice folded both parts, thus forming two sepa- 
rate nets of quadruple strength, each one a little 
more than eleven feet long. 

Then, by means of wooden pegs driven into 
the rocky walls, we hung one of these nets loosely 
across the ravine, here only ten feet wide, and 
tied the lamb to a stake six feet behind it; then 
in like manner suspended the other net at an 
equal distance in rear of the live bait, so that no 
wild beast could get at it from either direction 
without first breaking through a net. 

We went home then, but came back shortly 
after dark and hid ourselves near the trap, in such 
a wa;^ that w^e could not be either scented or seen 



GREAT CATS 1 HATE MET, 



59 




THE MOXKEVS 



by any animal that might try to seize the lamb 
which kept up, meantime, a pitiful bleating, not 
knowing — poor in- 
nocent — that it 
was perfectly safe! 
The night was 
not at all dark, as the 
moon was nearly full; 
and after watching a 
couple of hours we 
dimly saw some crea- 
ture creeping along the ravine bottom toward the 
bait. For several minutes it lay quite still within 
a few feet of the net, evidently studying the situa- 
tion. We 
ha r d 1 y 
dared t o 
breathe. 
But at last 
the beast, 
whatever it might be, sprang 
full against the flimsy-looking 
barrier and was instantly enveloped in its fatal 
folds, which only enwrapped it more and more 
tightly with each fresh furious struggle. 




JAGUAR AFTER 
MONKEYS. 



60 GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 

Seeing that our prize was safely caught, we 
came down from our hiding place, lighted a torch, 
and found that we had captured a handsome 
female cougar. Knowing that the creatures 
would be worth ten times more alive than dead, 
my friend fired two prearranged signal shots, 
whereupon a lot of cowboys came from the ranch, 
and in five minutes had so securely tied the 
squirming, raging beast that it could be carried 
away without difficulty. 

The next night, hoping to catch the fierce fe- 
male's mate, we went through precisely the same 
performance; but instead of a "lion," we had the 
rare good fortune to net a magnificent male ja- 
guar, which the fearless cowboys deftly secured 
in the same way they had carried off the cougar. 

On each occasion we used an unweaned lamb 
as a decoy, and had the pleasure of restoring both 
of the temporarily orphaned creatures to their 
mothers entirely unhurt. 

We tried this netting business twice again, but 
without success. Probably all the wildcats in 
the neighborhood had learned of our little game. 

After I had left that part of the country, my 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 61 

friend sold the jaguar and cougar to an agent of 
the San Antonio Zoo, where I afterwards saw the 
beasts and had photographs of both taken. How 
long they lived in captivity I don't know, as I 
have never since visited San Antonio. 



CHAPTER lY. 

THE "little spotted TIGER." 




A 



FEW days 



after our ad- 
venture with the 
jaguar, little 
Manuel and I 
went off by our- 
selves on a bird- 
hunt alons: the 



\ western edge of 
^^ his father's plan- 
tation. The for- 
est itself was woven too thick with parasitic vines 
for sportsmen to penetrate it. 

We got some grouse for the table, and some 
toucans for "specimens," and then sat down to 
rest under a clump of tree-ferns whose gigantic 
fronds furnished a perfect shade. 

G2 



HEAD OF OCELOT. 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 03 

Here we had lain for perhaps half an hour, 
when a swarm of monkeys, driven into conceal- 
ment b}^ our firing, reassembled in the near tree- 
tops and began to frisk about. 

We sat for a time watching their comical gam- 
bols, when suddenly their joyous chatter changed 
to alarmed cries, and their actions showed that 
some catastrophe had occurred. Numbers of 
them ran threateningly down the clinging vines 
nearly to the ground; then, as if seeing some 
sight of horror, they scurried aloft again, shriek- 
ing. 

Suspecting that a lurking puma had caught 
one of them, we peered in among the undergrowth 
but discovered nothing. 

The next moment we heard, seemingly not ten 
yards away, a sort of rending noise, also a con- 
fused murmur of growls and purrs, louder but 
much like the sounds uttered b}^ a domestic cat 
in devouring a mouse. 

Sure now that we were within a few feet of a 
jaguar or a puma, I lay down, gun in hand, to 
worm myself into the forest. I motioned little 
Manuel to remain where he was. With a flash of 
his dark eves he placed himself beside me. 



G4 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 



'Twas no time for argument, besides I knew that 
as we could not advance abreast the boy would be 
shielded by my own body. 

Noiselessly, one following the other, we drew 
ourselves along on the soft black ground, contin- 
ually hearing that curious 
double murmur which 
seemed as if it could 
not be produced by 
a single animal. 

After going 
about 




OCELOT'S HrNTI>;G. 



twenty- 
five feet, I 
found myself 
coming to a lighter, 
more open spot where a 
lately-fallen tree had cleared a narrow lane. 
Peeping out of my thick cover, I saw a sight 
which, notwithstanding its horror, was so ex- 
tremely pretty that I did not shoot at once, but 
waited for little Manuel to bring his head even 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 65 

with mine. There we gazed admiringly upon two 
creatures of surpassing beauty; a pair of spotted 
ocelots, nose to nose, were stretched out on the 
tree-trunk devouring a large monkey lying be- 
tween them, and amicably purring over their 
feast, though sometimes, when one seemed to be 
getting more than its share, the other would hit 
it an admonitory cuff. 

For a full minute we watched the handsome 
animals. They were not five yards from us, but 
their scenting powers were too much blunted by 
the odor of their feast to detect our presence. 
Then I quietly signaled Manuel to take the one on 
his side, while I would secure the other. 

But another actor, more interested and less 
tardy than we, now appeared upon the scene. 
Very cautiously we were bringing our guns into 
position, when, like a flash, there shot down from 
the tangled maze overhead a black and orange 
streak, wound its lower end about the ocelot at 
which I was about to fire, lifted it partly up, and 
in less than one moment the beautiful little cat 
was wholly enwrapped in the whirling coils of a 
huge boa! 



66 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



Its mate, as if fascinated, never tried to escape, 
but remained on ttie log, piteously mewing. 

We, too, were bewildered, but when the great 
serpent rolled off the log with its prey, I whis- 
pered Manuel to shoot the uninjured ocelot and 
I would dispose of the boa. 

Our rifle barrels cracked simultaneously, and 
then my gallant young comrade, hitherto so self- 
contained, went half wild over our good luck. 
He could hardly be toned down enough to assist 
in taking the pelts off the cats and in measuring 
the boa — thirteen feet long, the serpent was! 

There are two varieties of the ocelot in Brazil, 
the plain gray and the spotted. Ours were full- 
grown speci- 
mens of the 
latter kind, 
called by 
native hunt- 
ers "the little 




CROUCHED FOR SPRINGING. 



Spotted tiger," in contradistinction to the jaguar, 
w^hich is known in Brazil as "the great tiger." 
The spotted ocelot, a great climber and exceed- 
ingly bloodthirsty, is about two-thirds as large as 




AXOTHEU AOTOK APPEARED I POX THE SCENE. 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 



the hunting leopard of India. Our specimens 
were about four feet long, but the tail alone meas- 
ured twenty-five inches. Their standin<»: height 
was about nineteen inches. 

This singularly handsome cat is truly leopard- 




PITEOUSLY MEWIXG. 



like in its habits, and it is as much at home 
among the tree-tops as are the n^onkejs them- 
selves, though it does not often capture one of 
these — its favorite dainty — in fair chase, but by 
lying in wait among the bushes. 

As to the color of the ocelot, I was reminded 
a little of our own tortoise-shell cats, — the fur, 
fawn-tinted, being broken up b}' blotches and 



70 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

bands of very deep fawn edged with black. A 
continuous line of black runs along the spine. 
The rather small ears are black, but on the back 
of each, near its base, is a little disk of pure 
white, characteristic, I think, of no other mem- 
ber of the cat family. 

When Ave got home with our trophies, Senhor 
Kinaldo gave some of his slaves permission to go 
out and bring in the skin of the boa, with so much 
of the underlying fat as they chose to strip off; 
the oil tried out from the fat of the boa being con- 
sidered by the Indians of Brazil a sovereign rem- 
edy for various diseases. 

These slaves, hoAvever, were negroes, not In- 
dians, as the latter, though useful to the planters 
in many w^ays, do not take kindly to hard work. 
At that time all Brazilian planters owned slaves, 
and Senhor Kinaldo treated his precisely as a 
good master treats free domestic servants. 

The jolly laughing fellows, four of them, went 
off in great glee, being hugely pleased by the fact 
that we had killed a tree-boa, a reptile though not 
nearlA" so large, far more dangerous than the great 
anaconda and intensely hated by plantation la- 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 71 

borers. One of the men told me that a little six- 
jear old son of his had been crushed to death by 
one of these serpents and would certainly have 
been swallowed but for the prompt rescue of his 
lifeless body. 

The men were gone a much longer time than 
seemed necessary; but by-and-by they came back, 
shouting, singing and dancing, with the skins of 
two boas! 

They told us that one of their number — who, 
indeed, still looked almost gray from fright — had 
very nearly lost his life on their expedition. It 
seems that the mate of the dead boa had found 
and followed the trail of its lost companion (a 
quite common occurrence) and had coiled itself 
up in a low tree close at hand, as if to keep a 
watch over the form of its partner. The careless 
negroes, armed only with knives, did not notice 
anything unusual in the dense tree-top. One of 
them had just stooped down, knife in hand, to slit 
open the dead snake's skin, when swift almost 
as a lightning flash the live one, above, darted 
upon him, sank its fortunately venomless fangs 
into his left wrist and, having thus secured a ful- 



72 GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 

cTum, whirled its coils around his body, but most 
luckily without enclosing his right arm. 

The three spectators w^ere, as they confessed, 
paralyzed by fright, and in ten seconds more their 
imperilled comrade would have been beyond help. 
But he, moved to unwonted quickness of thought 
by his peril and before the constricting folds had 
fairly begun to exert their crushing power, thrust 
his razor-sharp knife, edge upward, between his 
left wrist and the serpent's neck and with one 
sweeping motion actually cut the head cleanly 
off! 

Then, as the hideous coils slow^ly unwound, the 
poor fellow began, his comrades said, to cry like 
a bab}^ and to tremble as if in a fit. But he was 
not much hurt, after all; and was more than con- 
soled for his fearful adventure b}^ finding himself 
thenceforth a hero on the plantation. 




THE LAST OF THE LITTLE SPOTTED TIGEE. 



CHAPTER V. 



A BLACK LION. 




HEAD, SIDE VIEW. 



T N 1843 I made a two- 
^ hundred - and - fifty 
mile mulebaek journey 
from the province of the 
Rio de Janeiro to the 
Carandahy River, and it 
occupied me, my two 
half-breed Indians and 
my packmules, nearly three weeks. There was 
not a foot of railway in Brazil at that time. Our 
road for the whole distance was little more than a 
forest path. 

It was on this trip I met a very rare cat, such a 

cat as I had never before seen, and have never since 

— a cat, indeed, w^hose existence has been and is 

still a subject of doubt to many naturalists. 

One day we came to a small, sluggish river, 

73 



74 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

only about forty feet wide, but too deep for wad- 
ing. We knew w^e would have, to swim across. 
But as there were a number of big alligators lazily 
floating about within sight it seemed to me rather 
a risky proceeding. 

I concluded to take time for a cold lunch and 
to consider the chances. 

While we were sitting in the shade, about thirty 
yards away from the water's edge, silently eating, 
there suddenly waddled into view from the un- 
dergrowth on the opposite side of the stream a 
big capybara, a water hog. Just as it was sliding 
down its well-worn runway into the water, there 
descended upon it, like a thunderbolt, from an 
over-arching mimosa-tree, a jet-black beast, killing 
it in a second. 

With a gurgling scream of triumph, which 
somehow seemed familiar to me, the black crea- 
ture stretched himself beside the capybara, to lap 
the hot blood from its torn throat. What could 
this new animal be? 

My Indians would have fired at once, but anx- 
ious to make sure of the strange game I mo- 
tioned them to drop their clumsy flintlocks, and 



GREAT CATS £ HATE MET. 



75 



took very careful aim with my rifle. The capy- 
bara's body shielded the black head, and I had 
to fire at the heart, though I knew that even with 
that organ pierced through and through the 
beast might struggle far enough away to ef- 
fectually conceal himself in the dense bushes. 

My bullet struck just 
back of the shoulder. The 
astonished creature uttered 
an appalling humanlike 
shriek, bounded high in the 
air, rolled over once, and 
then disappeared into the 
scrub. I ordered an instant 
crossing. We mounted and 
took the water abreast, each 
of us leading a packmule. 
With our six animals we 
made so big an array, and 
splashed so vigorously, that the alligators thought 
it best not to attack us. 

We scrambled out to dry land, and my Indians 
dismounted and crawled off into the thicket. 
Presently I heard a chorus of exultant cries, and 




UTTERED AN APPALLING 
HUMAN-LIKE SHRIEK." 



76" GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 

in a few minutes they emerged, dragging what 
they declared to be a "black lion," though they 
both confessed they had never before heard of, 
nor seen, such an animal! Still, it was a "black 
lion," they said. 

For a while I was sorely puzzled what to make 
of my prize. A cat it unmistakably was — but of 
what species? 

The whole head, back and sides, and even the 
tail, were glossy black, while the throat, belly, 
and inner surfaces of the legs were shaded off to 
a stone-gray. I measured it carefully. The 
measures very closely corresponded with the 
well-remembered measurements of a North Amer- 
ican "panther" to which I narrowly escaped fall- 
ing a victim when I was a nine-year-old boy, and 
which was the only wild cougar, or puma, I had 
ever seen up to this time. The teeth, the claws, 
the shape of its head, the "set" of its ears, were 
like those of the Canadian cat. 

My Indians were right! All native Brazilians 
call the tawny-gray puma a "lion," and the feline 
I had just slain was undoubtedly a black puma. 
Of this my own examination convinced me, and 





MBENGO SLASHED AT HIM. 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 79 

afterwards an aged Indian hunter told me that 
he had himself once shot "a black lion." 

Whether this rare cat is a permanent variety 
of its species, or merely an occasional freak of 
nature, I have never been able to learn, though I 
have taken much trouble in trying to decide the 
point. 

With the exception of the old Indian referred 
to, no one I met in Brazil could tell me anything 
about it, and so I one day induced this man to 
give all the details of his OAvn single encounter 
with the beast and to say whether he thought it, 
barring color, just an ordinary "lion" (puma). 

I cannot repeat the story in the old fellow's 
own words, for his language was a curious jumble 
of Indian, Portuguese and English, and I could 
only pick out the phrases uttered in the last- 
named tongue and fill up the gaps as best I could, 
so as to make the whole coherent and intelligible. 
T am confident, however, that the following, elic- 
ited piece-by-piece by many questions, is a correct 
rendering of what my red friend wished me to 
understand. 

It seems that when a much younger man, a 



80 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



famous hunter and the owner of a real percussion- 
lock gun, he lived with his people near a great 

forest in which, 
besides all kinds 
of native game, 
were many 
"lions'^; and these 
beasts, he said, 
not only destroyed 
vast quantities of 
the wild game, 
but also preyed 
upon the few do- 
mestic animals 
and fowls possessed by his family. Hence there 
was no creature in the neighborhood he so much 
hated, and so persistently hunted and killed. 

Several times, in roaming the woods, he had 
seen an unknown black animal, sometimes on the 
ground and sometimes in the tree-tops, which 
acted in every way like a "lion"; but, though he 
had often shot at it, he could never succeed in 
bringing it down nor so far as he could see even 
wounding it. 




HEAD, FRONT VIEW. 




O^r THE TRAIL. 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 83 

Finally, the superstitious hunter became con- 
vinced that the mysterious black creature was 
possessed of an evil spirit, and that he might 
imperil his own soul by molesting it. (Many of 
these aboriginal Indians are devout Catholics, 
and all have learned that they have souls to be 
lost or saved.) So he determined never again to 
run so great a risk, but in future to let the 
dreaded thing alone, and propitiate it by leaving 
some of his own freshly-killed game for it to feed 
upon. 

This peaceful policy seemed so much approved 
of by the strange beast that, after it had been 
in force a week or two, it never attempted to run 
away or hide at sight of the credulous hunter. 
It would lie on a low tree-limb and blink at him 
in a quite friendly manner, apparently. 

Deep cunning and a true catlike treachery lay, 
however, beneath this seeming amiability ; for one 
pitch-dark night, when the man was accidently 
belated before getting clear of the forest, he came 
very near furnishing a supper for his ungrateful 
protege! 

Knowing that noxious beasts were lurking 



84 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



everywhere around him, the nearly naked Indian 
was groping his way through the dense under- 
growth, holding his loaded gun half breast-high 
and pointing straight ahead, while his finger 
rested on the trigger. Suddenly, and without a 
premonitory sound, something that seemed to be 
merely a moving chunk of the inky darkness 
dashed against the muzzle of the gun, which was 




discharged at the instant of contact. By the 
momentary powder flash the astonished hunter 
saw a great black thing fall at his feet. 

Drawing out his flint, tinder and steel, he kin- 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 85 

died a little fire, and then found that the heavy 
bullet from his gun had entered the mouth and 
passed clear through the head of the long-feared 
black beast! This fact at once dispelled the ig- 
norant fellow's delusion. He carefully examined 
the dead animal and quickly came to the conclu- 
sion that it was in all respects, except in color, a 
common "lion" — an unusually large male; but 
why black he could tell no more than can I. 



CHAPTER VI. 



A DAY IN A TREE. 




W 



HEAD OF PECCARY 



HILE in Brazil, I had 
one day a very interest- 
ing adventure, which I shared 
with two cats. 

I had left my Indians in 
camp, and was strolling alone 
through a partly-cleared por- 
tion of the forest. Coming 
into an open glade, I saw a little ahead a herd of 
white-lipped peccaries rooting among the logs in 
search of lizards, small snakes, beetles and other 
creej)ing things on which these curious hog-like 
creatures feed. 

Although I had not been long in the country, 
I had learned that unless a safe place of refuge 
be at hand it is dangerous for any living thing 
to meddle with these savage little beasts. But 

86 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 87 

as they were the first peccaries I had ever seen, 
I determined to stay and study them. So I slung 
my rifle and softly climbed up into the notch of a 
low-spreading tree where I could watch the comi- 
cal tailless animals at my ease. 

By and by, one of the herd — there were about a 
hundred — wandered away from the rest and came 
almost directly under my perch, and began to 
root up the ground precisely like a domestic pig. 
While looking down on it, I saw two slowly ad- 
vancing lines of wave-like motion in the high 
grass between it and the forest's edge. I could 
not see what caused the motions. Little by little 
the unseen objects drew nearer, and I almost 
held my breath waiting to see what I should see. 
The lines of motion were not long enough, nor 
wavy enough, to be made by snakes; besides I 
knew that the boa-constrictor, the only serpent 
likely to attack such game, did not steal upon its 
prey in that manner. 

All at once, at last, two spotted forms bounded 
high above the grass and descended on the pec- 
cary. With fierce catlike growls they tried to fix 
their teeth and claws in its bristly back. But the 



88 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 




" TWO SLOWLY-ADVANCIKG LINES OF WORM-LIKE MOTION." 

peccar}^, dropping on the ground, rolled over and 
over, squealing, and instantly the whole herd 
came rushing up, and in one minute would have 
made mince-meat of the rash cats if they had 
not scurried up a tree. This tree stood about 
thirty feet from mine. 

While the beasts were climbing the trunk, and 
even after they had settled themselves among the 
branches, I could see them perfectly well, but I 
could not guess what they were. I only knew 
they were some kind of cat. At first glance I had 
thought of ocelots, but they were too small, not 
so beautiful, and not spotted in the same way. 

But my study was cut short. The herd of pec- 
caries had discovered my presence. Perhaps 
connecting me with their four-footed enemies, 
they surrounded both trees and began to gnaw 
the trunks furiously, as if bent on cutting them 
through. My curiosity had got me in a pretty 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 



89 



fix! I had not enough ammunition to shoot a 
quarter of the herd. I and their other treed 
game were close prisoners. We might have to 
stay in our trees until we perished from thirst, 
or dropped down among the beasts. To descend 
alive among the 
peccaries would be 
certain death. I 
was not more than 
a mile from camp, 
and possibly might 
have called my In- 
dians by firing a 
rapid succession of 
shots, but all the 
gold of Brazil 
would not tempt 
an Indian to attack 
a drove of white- 
lipped peccaries. I • 

had one hope: it was early morning and the day 
was all before me. Perhaps the vicious little 
beasts might get intolerably thirsty themselves 
after awhile and make off. 




THEY DESCENDED OX THE PECCARY, 



90 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

But until they did leave, I must sit in my tree 
and wait. And I did wait, hours and hours; 
waited until the noonday sun blazed down 
through my leafy screen; waited until I would 
have given all I had for a pint of water — and still 
the savage peccaries kept up the siege. 

By the middle of the afternoon my thirst be- 
came intolerable. I was in a frenzy. It seemed 
the only thing to do, to slaughter as many of the 
besiegers as m}^ ammunition would permit. 
Bringing my rifle round I pointed it downward 
to fire. At that moment one old grizzled pec- 
cary, evidently the leader, suddenly came out 
from tiie crowd and moved off, uttering a series 
of squeaking grunts. He was instantly followed 
by the whole herd. These signals were probably 
a call to some woodland watering place, as they 
did not go in the direction of the river. 

The moment the^^ were out of sight, thirsty as 1 
was, I turned my attention to the two cats, noAV 
stretched lazily out on a limb and not bothering 
themselves at all over the turmoil they had raised. 
In a flash I had made sure of the larger one, but 
at the crack of my rifle its mate leaped boldly out 




(f 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



93 



into space and, coming down right side up, 
bounded away. 

I slid down from my roost and stripped off the 
pelt of the slain cat in great haste, fearing the pec- 
caries might return after drinking. The fur was 
pale yellow above, marked b^^ longitudinal lines 
of dark patches. The lower parts were white, also 
marked b}' rows 
of dark spots. 
But in all other 
respects — shape of 
head, form of body, 
teeth and claws, it 
was strikingly like 
an ocelot. 

I got safely back 
to camp with the 
pelt, but the Indians 
could not name the 
animal, and I felt I had found a creature about as 
rare as my "black lion." 

Many years afterwards, in the city of Calcutta, 
I happened to pick up an illustrated edition of a 
work on natural history by a Spanish naturalist, 




^/^/ 



•'OXE OLD GRIZZLED PECCARY. 



94 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

Don Felix de Azora, who had during his lifetime 
resided in Brazil. From this book I learned that 
the cat which had so puzzled me, and the natives 
as well, was the mitis, or chati, which, I think, is 
found only in South and Central America. At all 
events, I never came across the animal in Africa, 
Asia, nor in any of the isles of the remote eastern 
seas. It has often since occurred to me that pos- 
sibly the pretty little beast may be a cross be- 
tween the ocelot and the common tiger-cat, as, in 
many ways, and in its habits, it resembles both; 
but I am not enough of a naturalist to know 
whether such a cross is within the bounds of prob- 
ability, or even possibility, though I see no reason 
why it should not be. 

I offered my Indian attendants a liberal reward 
to kill or capture the mitis which escaped; but 
after a whole day of zealous hunting they gave up 
the job, not having even caught sight of the 
creature. They got the coveted reward all the 
same, however, as they brought me in two beauti- 
ful little "lion" cubs which they found nestled up 
on a mossy bed in the heart of a thorny thicket. 

It was then that I learned that puma or cougar 




ITS MATE T.EAPED. 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 97 

kittens are striped and spotted, as mentioned in 
the opening chapter of this book. Indeed, but for 
the information given by Indians, I should 
never have guessed that these two — about the size 
of gray squirrels and evidently very young — were, 
or could possibly be, the cubs of a mother of such 
sober color as is the female, as well as male, Bra- 
zilian "lion." 

I felt so anxious to preserve the little things 
that, as they would not eat solid food, I determined 
to turn back next day and try to find some ranch 
where milk might be obtained; but I had no 
chance to carry out my resolve. 

The Indians had woven an apparently strong 
cage of twigs for the kittens, and this with a quite 
heavy weight on top was placed in my own tent 
before any of us went to bed that night. Nothing 
disturbed our sound sleep, and no idea of the cubs 
escaping ever entered our heads, for we knew that 
they could neither dig nor break out of the cage. 

But we left one important element out of our 
calculations — we did not know of what daring 
cunning a wild beast bereft of her young is capa- 
ble. Not one of us had heard a sound during the 



98 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

night, 3'et when daylight came we found that a 
big hole had been torn in the side of the cage and 
the cubs were gone! 

A number of tracks in the dust around and on 
the floor of the tent clearly proved that the mother 
"lion" had. scented out her babies, crept under the 
tent wall, boldly rescued them, and carried them 
away, probably one by one in her mouth as a 
house-cat often carries her kittens. This, con- 
sidering the usually cautious, cowardly nature of 
the puma, was a truly extraordinary performance 
and worth recording. 



CHAPTER VII. 



MY FIRST LION-HUNT. 



A FTEK staying some 
^~^ months in Brazil, a 
thirst for adventure led 
me to South Africa. 
After much wandering 
I camped down in 
Matabele Land. I had 
a Transvaal wagon 
drawn by six oxen, and 
six Matabele natives. 

In those days lions 
were numerous in that 
part of Africa, and my ambition was to shoot one. 
So far, I had never got a fair sight of a lion though 
we could hear them roaring around us every night, 
and had to keep up fires to prevent our men and 
cattle from being surprised by the prowlers; for 

99 




HEAD OF MALE LION. 



100 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET, 

the lion is the most cunning, treacherous and 
sneaking of the cat family. Sometimes he is bold, 
at other times cowardly. It all depends upon the 
state of his stomach. After a heavy meal he ap- 
pears indifferent, if not actually magnanimous; 
but woe betide the man or beast upon whom he 
comes hungry! I have known a full-grown lion 
to run from a child in the dusk of evening, and the 
same animal to charge next day upon a dozen well- 
armed men and carry off one in broad daylight! 

Two of my men, whom I called Tom and Joe, 
spoke a little English, and these two usually went 
with me when out on foot. One day we three were 
hunting in the Molopo foothills, when Tom, who 
had been scouting in advance, came softly back 
and whispered: "Master, me see big tao (lion) go 
into hole in rocks." 

After going a hundred yards or so through scat- 
tering trees and bushes, w^e came to a great pile 
of rocks. On one side yawned a dark opening 
about five feet high and four wide. That we had 
indeed found a lion's den, the rank feline odor i)ro- 
ceeding from the hole, as well as numerous bones 
lying around, furnished proof. 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



101 



"Yes, Tom, there's a lion in there. But how are 
we to get him?" 

"Wait till sun most down; then tao hungry, and 
come out." 

This really seemed our only chance of getting a 
shot at the beast. But our patience was tested 
scarcely twenty minutes. 

I had sat down at one side of the opening. The 




HOXESS AND CUBS. 



two blacks were carelessly standing a little in 
front. Suddenly, without having made a sound, 
an enormous red-maned lion darted from the 
cave's mouth, reached the men in two bounds and 
bore both to the ground. Either through fright, 



102 GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 

or from being stunned, neither of the fellows 
uttered a cry. They lay as if dead. The lion, 
lashing his long tufted tail and growling, stood 
over them, as though undecided which to finish 
first. 

He was not more than fifteen yards from me 
and I had all the guns, but this was the first lion 
I had ever encountered, and I was nervous. The 
bullet I fired at the back of the huge uplifted head 
struck too low. Koaring, he turned from the 
prostrate blacks and came at me; not leaping as 
before, but in a sort of crouching run. 

It was an appalling sight. With ears laid back, 
bristling hair, flaming eyes and exposed fangs, 
he looked with his sweeping mane a demon of 
destructive power, and I had short time to reflect 
that if my next shot did not kill him I should be 
torn to pieces, when he suddenly stopped within 
ten feet of me and crouched lower still, and I had 
my chance. Quick as lightning, I aimed between 
the cruel eyes and touched the trigger. A 
thunderbolt could not have caused a more instan- 
taneous death. When shot squarely through the 
brain, the largest lion or tiger is as easily killed 
as a rabbit. 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 105 

With a shout I looked across to where Tom and 
Joe had lain. Being but slightly bruised, on see- 
ing my peril, both had taken to the nearest trees. 
Now seeing the dread "tao" dead, they came down 
again. 

But our dangerous sport was only begin- 
ning. I had just reloaded, when in the distance 
we heard that peculiar sighing moan which pre- 
cedes a lion's roar, and then the hoarse, rumbling 
roar itself. 

"She-tao come!" exclaimed Joe, his swarthy 
face almost pale. 

"Stand by me, you cowards," I commanded, put- 
ting a rifle in the hands of each. "Fire together 
when I give the word! If you run I'll shoot you 
both!" 

When not frightened they were good shots, and 
believing my threats they braced up. I had 
hardly finished speaking when a large lioness, 
clearing the high bushes, came bounding toward 
us. "Now! Fire!" I shouted as she alighted 
within twelve feet of us and crouched for the final 
spring. The three guns cracked together and 
every bullet told. Tom and Joe went half-crazy. 



106 GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 

and I was not much less jubilant over this good 
termination of my first lion hunt. 

But was it terminated? Evidently my men 
thought not. While I was reloading, they 
crawled into the den with a supply of matches. 
Presently, mingled with their exultant cries, I 
heard a sound of whining and meowings. In a 
minute or two the grinning blacks came out, 
bringing a pair of beautiful cubs, not higher, but 
much heavier and longer than large house cats. 
The pretty little creatures, too, spit and snarled, 
scratched, bit and meowed exactly as does an en- 
raged tabby, though more vigorously. We were 
obliged to tie their feet together and muffle their 
heads in order to carry them away. 

I had never before seen lion-cubs and was sur- 
prised to find their soft fawn-tinted coats marked 
by dark stripes like those of an adult tiger. These 
lines, my Matabeles said, always disappeared 
when the youngsters reached the age of six 
months. 

We tried hard to keep the valuable kittens 
alive, but unable to get milk, we did not succeed. 
The interesting little creatures would not eat any 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 



107 




STEALING OX ITS PREY. 



kind of flesh, nor even lap the 
warm blood of freshly-killed 
game, and both died before 
the end of the week. 

Afterwards, however, in 
another part of the country, 
I got three lion-cubs, some- 
what older than the two lost, and, by employing a 
she goat as wet-nurse, succeeded in conveying the 
little creatures safely to Capetown. Two of them 
lived and when, as we supposed, about seven 
months old, were sold for |100 each to the travel- 
ing agent of an American menagerie — a great 
bargain for him, as he would probably have had 
to expend ^ye times that amount in having such a 
pair captured. 

I had many lion adventures in Africa. One of 



108 GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 

them occurred when I was traveling with a large 
party of traders and hunters high up on the Zam- 
besi Kiver in a region unknown to any of us. The 
party consisted of twelve white men and about 
fifty blacks, the latter being necessary to do the 
hard work and look after our six wagons, each of 
which was usually drawn by eight oxen, though 
sometimes in deep sand or heavy mucky land we 
had to put on four more, from the reserve herd. 

One evening, just as it was growing dark, we 
outspanned by the side of a native village contain- 
ing nearly one hundred miserable mud huts, whose 
inhabitants told us that a large black-maned lion 
had been seen and scared away by a little boy a 
few minutes before our arrival. 

"Why didn't it eat the boy?'' asked our 
interpreter. 

"Because," replied one of the villagers, "it was 
surely the same beast that killed and half de- 
voured one of our cows last night. He was full 
up and didn't want boy-meat. Likely he'll come 
back for more cowby-and-by. Then the white man 
can shoot him." 

This we were very anxious to do, as black-maned 




THE LION DASHEP OUT OF COVER 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. Ill 

lions were rarely met with in that part of the coun- 
try. So, after supper, some of us concealed our- 
selves near the remnants of the slaughtered cow, 
and others staked out a live goat close to the patch 
of jungle into which the lion had retreated. We 
took turns in watching the baits all night, but the 
lion, not being as yet very hungry, never came 
near either of them; or else he was w^atching us 
and perhaps laughing at our shallow^ devices. 

Next morning, having decided to employ all the 
adult males of the village and some of our own 
blacks in thoroughly beating the jungle, we 
twelve white men were standing in a group, 
within ten feet of an especially dense clump of 
bushes, arranging our plans, when with a single 
appalling roar the lion dashed out of cover, seized 
a young German named Berstein and quick as 
thought bore him into a tangled thicket. 

Stricken down by one blow of the brute's ter- 
rible paw, the poor fellow had not time to utter a 
cry; and we, though all armed with double rifles, 
had no time to fire before the savage monster had 
disappeared with his victim. 

But it was not for men of Anglo-Saxon blood to 



112 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



stand weakly by in face of such a tragedy. With 
one accord, while the cowardl}^ villagers and our 
own servants ran shrieking away, the whole 
eleven of us plunged into the almost impervious 
jungle, spreading out our line and pushing, tear- 
ing, fighting our way along like so many madmen. 

We might, we 
thought, recover 
our comrade's 
body, but the 
chances were a 
thousand to one 
that none of us 
would ever catch 
sight of his de- 
stroyer. That sin- 
gle forlorn chance 
won, however, for 
in less than five 
minutes three of 
us, ranging a few feet apart, came upon the mur- 
derous brute standing, defiantly growling, over his 
precious prey, as if daring us to interfere. 

We were not more than eisfht feet from the 




DEFIANTLY GROWLING. 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 113 

beast; indeed, in that tropical undergrowth we 
could not have seen him at a greater distance. 
But we had space enough to level our guns, and 
ere he could make a movement three steel-pointed 
bullets crashed through his brain. 

Our young friend, not at all mutilated, was 
quite dead, however; and all we could do was to 
give him Christian burial, and send off a despatch 
with the sad news to his relatives in Zanzibar 
before sorrowfully continuing our journey. 



CHAPTEK VIII. 

A SOUTH AFRICAN LEOPARD. 

A S the elephant is not exactly a cat, I need not 
^~^ tell here how, while in camp on the Limpopo 
River, I killed an enormous one over ten feet high, 
his pair of tusks weighing a good deal over a hun- 
dred pounds; nor how the mountain of flesh was 
consumed by a swarm of wild Matabeles, who 
flocked in to the feast from forest depths which I 
had supposed to be entirely unpeopled. My only 
reason for referring to it is, that because of this 
"kill," as Rudyard Kipling's jungle people would 
sa}', I determined to possess a leopard's skin; a 
magnificent one worn as a sign of his rank by the 
"Headman" of the Matabeles at the elephant feast 
having excited my admiration. 

Next morning with my two natives, Tom and 
Joe, I started out after my leopard's skin. We 
went prepared to lie in wait all day. We knew 

114 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



115 



this distant part of the forest abounded in 
monkeys and iguanas (big lizards), on which the 
leopard is fond of lunching. 

Once well within the forest depths, we sat 
down, each with his back against a tree. There 
we remained abso- 
lutely motionless, 
but keenly on the 
watch. As long as 
we did not stir we 
knew our presence 
would not be dis- 
covered by any 
beast which in those 
darkling woods 
might be seeking 
its prey during day- 

^ '^ AN AFRICAN LEOPARD. 

light hours. 

But we were very soon found out by a visitor. 
Since taking our places, quarter of an hour before, 
none of us had heard more than the usual forest 
sounds, made by monkeys, parrots and other 
dwellers in the tree-tops. Yet there suddenly ap- 
peared from behind Tom's tree a native boy, whose 




116 GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 

only clothing was a feather girdle and a few daubs 
of red paint, and his only weapon a bow and 
arrow! The shiny black youngster seemed 
hardly twelve years old. He had seen us entering 
the forest, and had given us a lesson in noiseless 
woodcraft. 

He knelt by Tom's side and whispered. Tom 
came softly over to me. In whispers he said that 
in a grove of thorny scrub quite near, a big "tiger'^ 
was lying upon the ground devouring an iguana. 
^'Mbengo says,'' continued Tom, "you give him 
knife he show you tiger." Africans call leopards 
"tiger." 

I jumped at the offer. Taking off my belt, to 
which hung an excellent hunting-knife, I drew it 
up a few holes and buckled it around the urchin's 
chunky waist. The black imp could not refrain 
from cutting up some delighted capers, but almost 
immediately got down on all-fours and motioned 
us to do the same. 

I whispered my men to stay where they were. 
Then I crept on after the little fellow as well as I 
could. The soft, moist ground was free of leaves 
and sticks, so our advance was noiseless. After 



GREAT GATS I HAVE MET. II7 

going about one hundred and fifty yards, Mbengo 
stopped at the edge of a dense thicket and signed 
to me to draw up beside him. Then, very dimly 
through the thick scrub, I saw a splendid leopard 
stretched out at full length and complacently 
growling as he tore the prey held between his 
paws. 

I brought my gun round into position and set 
both locks without making a sound, but then 
found that from where I knelt it was impossible 
to make a sure shot at the low-lying beast. My 
sharp-witted guide saw it too. Before I could 




THE BUSY LEOPARD 



prevent, to my horror he disappeared in the 
thicket. Ten seconds afterwards I saw the upper 
part of his body as he stood upright not twelve 
feet behind the busy leopard! Next, I heard the 
twang of his bow and the whiz of a tiny arrow. 
The barbed point lodged in the back of the aston- 



118 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



ished beast. Harshly screaming, the leopard 
sprang up and around, and made a tremendous 
leap at its puny assailant. But quick as the 
motion was, the boy^s was quicker; while the en- 
raged creature, untouched by my hastily-fired 
shot, was yet in mid-air, Mbengo dropped behind 
a matted thorn bush — and as the leopard passed 
over him, actually had the audacity to slash at 
it with his new knife ! 

It is the nature of the cat kind 
to retreat when foiled in a first 
attack. My leopard, instead of 
turning upon the boy, sprang up 
the nearest tree. As he rose 
fairly into view, my second bullet 
brought him down, and when I 
reached the dead body my little 
darky was frantically dancing 
and yelling over it. 

Tom and Joe now came run- 
ning up and, hearing the story, 
gave a great proof of their admiration of 
their young countryman's prowess by each 
bestowing upon him some of their tobacco! I 




"HARSHLY SCKE AMINO." 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. L19 




A TREMENDOl'S LEAP.' 



afterwards found that this enterprising youngster 
was a son of the "Headman" I had noticed at the 
elephant feast; and no doubt on returning to his 
people with his store of tobacco and his knife, 
even his father's greatness was for a time eclipsed 
by his own. 

It was a singular piece of good fortune to have 
killed, in less than four hours after leaving camp, 
so fine a leopard. The big reddish-buff creature 
was truly a "great cat," over six feet long. His 
canines or tusks, were an inch and a half long; 
his claws — five on the fore feet and four on the 
hind feet — were deeply curved, sharp as needles, 
and strong, fully accounting for a leopard's 
wonderful climbing powers. 

The African leopard varies very much in 
ground-color in different localities and at differ- 
ent ages and seasons. I have seen leopards that 



120 GREAT GATS I HAVE MET. 

were almost red, and others that were a dull gray, 
but the "markings" — the broken circles and spots 
— were always present. 

Both in Asia and Africa I have observed the 
common leopard moving about in the tree-tops, 
and unless I had seen it, I w^ould not believe that 
any creature so large could be so agile. Some- 
times its motions are so quick that one's e3^e can 
scarce follow them among the branches, or dis- 
tinguish the animaPs lithe, graceful form from 
that of a swiftly-darting pj^thon — a great serpent, 
sometimes attaining a length of more than thirty 
feet, and quite capable of swallowing a much 
larger animal than the leopard, who in common 
W'ith other tree-climbing quadrupeds is mortally 
afraid of this huge "boa"; and not without reason; 
for quick as the leopard is, and formidable as are 
his means of defense, all avail him nothing Avhen 
once within the crushing folds of this dread 
enemy. 

Several varieties of the python family are found 
in the tropical parts of Africa. English-speaking 
people there call them "rock-snakes," because 
they love to bask among stones and boulders on 




MBENGO SLASHED AT HIM. 



GREAT CATS I HAYE MET. . 123 

the hot hillside, I presume. Although differing 
from each other in size of individuals, all the va- 
rieties are beautifully marked, much like the true 
boa of South America, to which, however, they 
are dissimilar in many structural points, though 
almost exactly identical in habits. 

Some ancient writers — who, I do think, must have 
drawn upon imagination for their facts — claim 
that the python sometimes grows to a length of 
sixty-five, and even seventy feet! This seems to 
me very much of a "snake-story"; but I really did 
see and measure one {dead, you may be sure) which 
lacked only an inch or two of thirty-two feet. 
This occurred in the Ulunda country, some time 
after the tragic death of poor Berstein, while four 
of our party were engaged in trying to find a large 
leopard, which after being once fired at had dis- 
appeared among a mass of huge broken rocks, 
near the foothills of Mosamba Mountains. 

As we knew the beast had been more or less 
severely wounded, we expected to come ujjon it 
without much trouble. But after searching the 
rocky labyrinth for f ulh^ two hours, we concluded 
that it had got clear aw^ay — probably into some 
fissure inaccessible to us. 



124 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

So we reluctantly gave up the hunt and were 
scrambling down through the rocks, intending to 
try our luck with a herd of antelopes then feeding 
on the plain below, when the man in advance sud- 
denly stopped on turning the corner of a big boul- 
der, and silently signaled the other three of us to 
join him. 

We crept cautiously to his side and then saw, 
on the ground, not twenty feet away, a great 
heap of brilliantly colored coils which seemed to 
be gradually contracting still more, with a horrid 
inexorable force, upon some luckless prey, invisi- 
ble as yet to us. 

"It's the great-grandfather of all rock-snakes," 
whispered Jack Horton. "Wait till we can see 
his head and neck, boys. Then we'll blow him to 
flinders!" 

Those parts of the monstrous reptile we could 
not see, however, as the big bundle of coils inter- 
vened between us and its head, which seemed to 
be fastened upon the encircled prey, and it was 
altogether too risky an operation to fire, haphaz- 
ard, into the coils themselves. But after a few 
minutes the compressing motions ceased — their 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 125 

deadly work being done — and the python raised 
his flat head and comparatively slender neck, as 
if about to unfold his fearful length preparatory 
to the gorging process. 

If the terrible creature saw us at all, it was but 
for the fraction of a second; for the instant his 
head and neck came into view both were shat- 
tered to fragments bv four simultaneouslv-strik- 
ing bullets. Then, with a shuddering convulsive 
movement, the hideous coils fell apart, and we 
saw that the serpent had done what we could not 
— caught and killed the wounded leopard! That 
was all right so far as the great cat's fine pelt 
Avas concerned, for although every bone in its 
body seemed to be broken, the skin was not in any 
way damaged. 

After stretching the dead python out perfectly 
straight and putting the head and neck in place, 
we measured it accurately and found the total 
length to be thirty-one feet, nine and a half inches! 
Some of our blacks afterwards took off the skin 
and said it was the longest one they had ever seen. 



CHAPTER IX. 

A FAMILY OF TIGERS. 

FROM Africa I went to Eastern India, partly 
to indulge in tiger-shooting and partly to see 
a very dear cousin and schoolmate, one Fred 
Stuart, who was a lieutenant in the British army 
and at that time stationed with his regiment at 
Calcutta. 

Shortly after my arrival Fred and five of his 
brother officers obtained a month's leave of ab- 
sence. With a good retinue of servants and 
horses we set off for the Province of Nagpoor, 
about two hundred miles northwest of Calcutta. 

Here we had great hunting; but a week had 
passed and we had not yet seen the first hair of a 
tiger. In that part of India the tiger was then 
hunted on foot, trained elephants not being ob- 
tainable. Tiger-hunting on foot is fearfully 
dangerous sport, but all the more attractive to a 
crowd like ours on that account. 

120 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 127 

One morning a native came into camp and told 
us a pair of old tigers and three well-grown cubs 
had nearly ruined the people of his village, only 
two miles away. They had killed their cattle and 
goats. The night before a woman had been 
carried off while going to the tank for water, only 
a few rods from her own door. 

A family of tigers is always more destructive 
than a dozen singly-roaming beasts. The parent 
pair kill ten times more prey than the whole 
family can consume, on purpose to show their 
young ones how to kill! I myself, posted on a 
platform in a tree-top, once saw a large tigress 
watching two cubs in their attempt to pull down 
a half-grown buffalo. When the buffalo beat 
them off, the old tigress bounded out of cover, 
broke the buffalo's neck in an instant and then, 
proudly standing over the body, recalled the re- 
treating cubs by a peculiar purr, and actually 
cuffed them for their cowardice! 

The native said the tigers had been "marked 
down" in a patch of jungle near his village: 
"Would the sahibs come out and kill them?" 

We would try. We loaded our big road-wagon 



128 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

up with fireworks, hand grenades, ground-rockets, 
fier}^ serpents and giant crackers, and started. 
We soon reached the village, a collection of mud- 
daubed bamboo huts. There were perhaps three 
hundred inhabitants. 

Made brave by our presence, all the men, nearly 
a hundred, volunteered to drive the tigers out of 
cover. They had provided themselves with tin 
pans, horns and wooden drums. We distributed 
the fireworks, and then went on foot to a piece of 
bush jungle which was fifteen or twenty acres in 
extent. The "beaters" went around to the far 
side, while we took up our positions in front. 
Fred Stuart and I kept together, but the other 
live men extended their line so as to cover a length 
of a hundred yards or more on our right. 

Then there began such a din, such screeching, 
yelling, tin-panning, horn-blowing, and drum- 
beating, such a screaming of rockets, darting of 
fiery serpents and explosion of grenades and 
crackers, that even a Fourth-of-July boy couldn't 
have stood the racket; much less could a respecta- 
ble family of tigers. 

The tigress and cubs were first to take alarm, 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 131 

the beaters being yet some distance away when 
the whole four sneaked out in a bunch, opposite 
the middle of the line held by our five comrades. 
All firing together, they were lucky enough to kill 
the old "she" and one cub; the others got away 
until next day. 

"But where is the old tiger?" I asked. 

"I'm afraid he's given us the slip," said Fred. 

Our companions were standng around their 
prizes. We were about to join them, when sud- 
denly, directly in our front, not fifty feet away, the 
long-bearded father-tiger thrust his wicked head 
out of the jungle, caught sight of us, and drew 
quickly back. But he could not retreat; closing 
in behind him, was the line of beaters asid a rain 
of flashing fire! 

My old chum had never before seen an enraged 
and really dangerous wild beast. I had served a 
hunter's apprenticeship among the great cats of 
Brazil and Africa. So, presuming on my experi- 
ence, I said: 

"Now, old fellow, keep cool and shoot straight. 
The old man-eater may charge us." 

Fred smiled, but I could see he was excited. 



132 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

We were both armed with double-barreled rifles, 
but Fred's was loaded with rouud balls, while 
ininej made expressly for big game, carried, in 
front of extra heavy charges of powder, long steel- 
pointed bolt-like bullets. 

The beaters were now near at hand, and the 
tiger, maddened by the storm of fir^, broke cover 
for good and bounded toward us. He did not 
roar as he came on — indeed, I have never heard 
a tiger emit a roar. He uttered a hoarse, horri- 
ble, grunting screech. ' 

As the magnificent beast touched the ground 
after his first spring, Fred and I shot together. 
We found the terrible cat quite dead, but the 
mark of only one bullet to be seen. This was in 
the centre of the creature's breast. "There!" 
cried Fred, "I aimed right at that spot." 

"And so did I, because his head was held in such 
a way that I could not make sure of piercing his 
brain," I rejoined. "But we'll see directly who 
made the lucky shot." And so we did. When 
half a dozen of the delighted natives had removed 
the skin, we found that my steel-pointed slug, 
after passing through nearly the whole length of 




" MADDENED BY THE STORM OF FIBE." 



GREAT CATS I BATE MET. 135 

the old man-eater^s body, had lodged in the back- 
bone, not six inches from the root of the tail. My 
chum yielded; but next day, after I had out- 
rageously missed, he killed one of the young tigers 
while it was in full flight. 

Almost everyone has seen the tiger in menage- 
ries; but the captive beast is a poor representative 
of the free-roaming "terror of the jungle." It is 
generally of inferior size, and more or less flabby 
in flesh, and its markings much dulled. 

A full-grown royal Bengal tiger weighs, when 
in good condition, nearly six hundred pounds; he 
stands four feet high, and sometimes from snout 
to tail-tip attains a length of eleven feet. The 
beast's strength is amazing; much greater indeed 
than might be expected even from his great size 
and wondrously muscular form. A tiger has 
more than once been known, after killing an 
Indian bullock by one stroke of his paw, to leap 
with the carcass over a six-foot wall — a most 
astonishing feat; for, although much smaller than 
the common American ox, an average Indian bul- 
lock is somewhat heavier than the largest tiger. 

Generally, a man-eating tiger is one which by 



136 GREAT CATS I HAYE MET, 

reason of old age has lost much of his agility and 
whose teeth have, perhaps, become broken or 
blunted by many years of bone-crushing. Find- 
ing it easier to capture human beings than more 
swift and stronger prey, such a beast sometimes 
takes up his quarters near an Indian village and 
continues to infest the neighborhood until some 
white sportsman comes along and puts a stop to 
his murderous career; for the natives, after one or 
two of their number have^been carried off, become 
completely panic-stricken. Indeed, it is no un- 
common thing for a single tiger to so terrorize a 
village that its inhabitants wholly forsake the 
place and move off to some other locality, their 
utmost vigilance proving no match for the dia- 
bolical cunning of their cruel enemy. 

The old man-eater seems to know perfectly well 
that the people must have water. Therefore he 
ingeniously conceals himself — in a different spot 
each time and often where there is apparently no 
cover at all — near a tank, or reservoir. 

In the early morning, at midday, or in the even- 
ing, a woman, or possibly a group of women ac- 
companied by men, will come out for water, tak- 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 137 

ing a circuitous route, if feasible, and peering cau- 
tiously about on all sides. They can see no signs 
of danger, catch no scent of the tiger's strong odor, 
nor perceive on the course ahead of them any 
object behind which he can possibly be hidden. 
So they go on, perhaps laughing at their own 
fears, when suddenly, rising from an open patch 
of sun-burned grass, the waiting tiger bounds upon 
one of their number and has disappeared in the 
jungle with his prey before the horrified survivors 
gather their senses sufficiently even to shriek. 

It may easily be imagined, then, how welcome 
to such villagers is the coming of well-armed 
white men who not only look upon tiger-killing as 
a legitimate sport, but also impart to the timor- 
ous natives themselves a little courage. 

It is hard to say which of those two monstrous 
cats, the lion and tiger, is the more formidable, 
or to tell for certain which can conquer the other. 
Except in mere outside covering, the beasts are 
much alike — ^that is, in size, strength, disposition 
and habits. If either has the advantage in point 
of weight, I think it lies with the tiger. 

As each one, or each family, of these destructive 



138 GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 

beasts requires a quite large territory for its sup- 
port, lions and tigers seldom range in common 
over any particular locality; hence fights between 
them are rarely witnessed. I myself have never 
seen one, but it must be a truly terrific spectacle. 
A veteran English sportsman, whom I met in Cal- 
cutta, had witnessed such a combat. He told me, 
that once, while watching a water hole on a moon- 
lit night, he had seen a lion and a male tiger 
engage in deadly fight. Both, he said, were full- 
grown beasts and apparently in perfect health 
and strength. The tiger began the battle by 
leaping on the lion while the latter was lapping 
up water, but was at once thrown off. Then, as 
the savage creatures struggled a few^ yards away 
from the pond's margin, the combat began in good 
earnest and was watched by the unsuspected spec- 
tator, who with two double rifles at hand peered 
curiously out from the edge of his pit. Some- 
times one beast, sometimes the other, seemed to 
have the advantage as the battle royal progressed 
amid frightful howls and shrieks of rage; but, 
finally, after it had lasted about thirty minutes, 
the lion was killed outright, and the victorious 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 139 

tiger, dragging himself painfully down to the 
water, died while attempting to drink. 

Thus the sportsman secured two magnificent 
pelts, though badly torn, without firing a shot; 
and his native servants, after stripping them off 
next morning, managed to cleanse the fur and 
patch up the rents so perfectly that no one, with- 
out inspecting the flesh side, could have guessed 
through what a fearful ordeal the grand trophies 
had passed. 



CHAPTER X. 



HOW I MET THE TRUE PANTHER. 




HEAD OF PANTHER. 



WE had been more than 
three weeks in our 
Nagpoor camp. We had 
had wonderful success in 
hunting dangerous game — 
man-eaters and cattle-slay- 
ers. But now it w^as time to go back to Calcutta. 
On the afternoon of the day before our intended 
break-up, Fred Stuart and I were toiling home- 
ward through a tract of forest, some miles from 
camp. We were loaded down with feathered 
game for the camp breakfast, and had sat down 
on an old log to rest. Each of us had a bottle of 
cold tea, our preferred drink on a hunting foray. 
Fred had just thrown back his head and tipped up 
his bottle, when he suddenly low^ered it again. 
"Take a look at the top of that big live-oak. Will,'' 

140 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 



141 




said lie. "I believe there's some kind of an ani- 
mal there. That thick clump of leaves, just over 
the middle of 
the second 
limb, a p- 
pears more 
solid than it 
ought to be." 

"So it 
does," I re- 
plied; "but I 
d o n't see 
anything." 

We left the log and threaded our way through 
the undergrowth. We tried four different posi- 
tions to get a better view of the mysterious object; 
but the foliage was so dense that w^e could not 
determine whether it was a hiding beast or a great 
knot on a horizontal limb. 

Some time passed, but the thing showed no 
signs of life. Nor could we detect the slightest 
rustle in the leaves. If it really were a lurking 
beast it was doubtless watching us. 

"Well," said Fred, after we had circled the tree 



THE PANTHER HIDING. 



142 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

several times, "I guess it's a knot. Let's go on." 

"Not so fast," said I. "It is a living creature, 
and has made a grand mistake." Just as Fred 
spoke, I had detected something remarkably like 
the end of a tail, hanging down from the limb! 

After looking for a while, Fred, too, caught 
sight of the pendant object. " 'Tis a bit of a tail, 
sure enough," said he. "See, it's moving." So it 
was, with a sort of tremulous twitching like that of 
a cat's tail when watching prey. But no more 
than a finger-length of it was visible. 

"It's probably a leopard," I said. "We'd better 
get further away from the tree. There's no tell- 
ing w hat a leopard will do when he finds that he 
is discovered." And we moved off twenty yards 
or so. 

Neither shotgun nor double rifle would be of 
any use unless we could get a good sight of the 
creature. On reflection, I said: "Fred, as you've 
never had a chance at a leopard, give me your gun 
and take my rifle. Pll fire a charge of shot into 
the tree. That will rout the cat out, for it's prob- 
ably a cat. The moment you see it plainly, shoot 
for certain." 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



143 



"I do want to bring down one at least of the 
murderous rascals," said Stuart. 

We exchanged guns, and I discharged the con- 
tents of both smooth-bore barrels into the mysteri- 
ous mass of foliage and cut off a perfect shower of 
leaves. 




A SHRILL, S>'ARLING SCREAM. 



Instantly came a shrill, snarling scream of fifty- 
cat power. Both of us caught a glimpse of a spot- 
ted beast darting out to the extremity of the great 
limb. Thence it sprang to another tree. 

In its haste, the leopard, as we both still thought 
it to be, made another fatal mistake; the tree to 



144 GREAT .GATS I HATE MET. 

which it fled was nearly destitute of concealing 
leaves. When it finally crouched in the upper 
crotch, we could see it. 

The scared animal evidently knew it. He 
reared up as if about to climb higher. The next 
instant Fred brought him to the ground. 

"A most magnificent leopard!'' cried the fortu- 
nate marksman. 

I had already seen too many of the various great 
cats not to be caught by peculiarities at a glance. 
"It's not a leopard at all, but a panther!" I 
answ^ered, "I've secured several leopards, and this 
beast certainly is not one." 

"Wh}^, it seems to me exactly like all leopards 
I've seen in shows, though it's plumper and glos- 
sier," persisted my comrade. 

" 'Tis not like them," I said. "See, now. This 
creature is shorter, chunkier and thicker-limbed 
than any leopard ever seen by anyone. The 
ground color of its fur is darker than any leop- 
ard's. Its spots are larger and very differently 
arranged; the inner edges of the spottings are 
more nearly black. The ears are more rounded 
and the tips of a deeper buff than a leopard's. 




wiliv/h^j/. 



IT SPRANG TO AXOTHEIl TREE.' 



GREAT GATS I HAVE MET. 147 

Just wait till you see the two pelts side by side. 
The old Major has a leopard-skin in camp now. 
Side by side you'll see the difference instantly." 

So it proved. When we got in with our new 

cat-pelt Major H at once pronounced it to be 

a panther's. 

"A much rarer animal than the leopard," he said 
consolingly to Stuart, "though nine sportsmen out 
of ten cannot tell one beast from the other." 

I myself afterwards killed, at different times 
and in different parts of India, one male and two 
female panthers; and I found that, while exactly 
like one another, all differed from the leopard in 
the particulars I have named. 

The two cats are of identical habits. Both are 
equally well armed in the way of teeth and claws; 
yet, if native hunters are right, they are not 
equally dangerous. All agree in saying that one 
leopard will commit greater havoc, especially 
among domestic cattle, than three panthers. 

By the description of this great cat, it will be 
at once seen that it is an error for so many of our 
North American people to call the cougar, or 
puma, a panther, even though the great novelist, 
J. Fenimore Cooper, did so. 



148 GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 

No, the true panther is not found in any part of 
America. It ranges over a great part of Africa, 
Southern Asia and many islands of the East In- 
dia seas in common with the leopard, with which 
many writers confound it, though it is nowhere 
so plentiful as is the last-named beast. 

One day^ while we were enjoying a rest at noon. 

Major H told us that his son Charlie, a boy 

fourteen years of age, once in a very remarkable 
manner, saved himself and little sister from being 
attacked by a panther. 

The children had, as it seems, all unnoticed by 
their native attendants, strolled out just before 
dark from their parents' bungalow, then located 
in the hill-country, and had seated themselves at 
the edge of a mango grove a hundred yards or so 
away. Charlie had brought out with him a bun- 
dle of lately-arrived English papers and was read- 
ing aloud such items of home news as he thought 
might interest the twelve-year-old little girl, when 
the latter suddenly clutched his arm and silently, 
but with evident terror, pointed to a particular 
spot in the grove. 

"What is the matter, Alice?" wonderingly asked 
the boy. 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



149 



"Oh, there! there!" tremblingly replied Alice. 
"See that awful creature! Oh! we shall be 
killed!" 

Looking toward the point indicated, Charlie 
saw a great panther, crouched low on the ground, 
creeping slowly forward with its glowing eyes 
fixed intently upon his companion and its tail ex- 
citedly twitching as it drew nearer and nearer to 
its hoped-for prey. 

For one moment 
the boy gave his 
sister and himself 
up for lost; but 
then his Anglo- 
Saxon courage 
and soldierly in- 
stincts reasserted 
themselves, and with them returned his presence 
of mind. His ready wit — nothing less than won- 
derful in so young a boy — had suggested a possible 
means of saving his sister. Even if his own life 
should be lost in trying the experiment, she would 
have time to escape; for, he reflected, the panther 
would certainly be satisfied, or, at all events, de- 
tained by the body of one victim. 




PANTHERS AT PLAY. 



150 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

So the gallant little fellow hastily rolled lightly 
together several immense sheets of the London 
Times, drew a match from the pocket of his linen 
blouse, touched it to the paper, and with the blaz- 
ing torch and a vigorous shout ran directly at the 
threatening beast! The charge of a dozen troop- 
ers could hardly have proved a more successful 
mode of defense; for on seeing the swiftly advanc- 
ing flames the panther uttered a shrill scream of 
affright and instantly disappeared in the now fast 
darkening grove. 

But believing her brother to be rushing on cer- 
tain death, the little girl had meantime fainted. 
The strong boy did not delay a moment. He 
caught her up in his arms and was hurrying to the 
bungalow, when the father, mother and a whole 
bevy of native servants — some of whom had heard 
his cries — met the young hero midway. Under 
their care the little girl quickly revived. 

"Then," said the Major, his face glowing with 
j)ride, as he told the story, "the youngsters man- 
aged to tell us what had occurred, though Charlie 
seemed to think nothing of his achievement — one 
which might well do honor to the bravest grown 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 151 

man. I at once called up all the forces, natives 
and soldiers, which I could muster and posted 
them as sentries around the mango grove; and 
next morning, after a long hunt, one of my brother 
officers shot the panther, a remarkably large and 
handsome male, whose beautiful pelt he presented 
to my boy." 



CHAPTER XL 



A BLACK LEOPARD. 



SHORTLY before sunset, on the first night of 
our return journey to Calcutta, we had pitched 
our tents near one of the large water-tanks scat- 
tered here and there throughout the country for 
irrigation purposes. The spot was not far from 
an extensive tree-jungle — a jungle where great 
forest trees grow amidst jungle-brush. 

We went to bed about eleven o'clock. Every- 
thing was silent in camp. Except the barking of 
distant jackals, no outside sounds were to be 
heard. Two persons were wide awake, however; 
for Fred Stuart and I had made up a bit of a plot 
to have yet one more try for big game. 

As soon as our tent-mates were peacefully 
snoring, we took our rifles and stole out towards 
the tank. The moon, which shines with peculiar 
brilliancy in India, was full. All unshaded spots 

152 



GREAT CATS I HATE MET. 153 

were almost as light as day. To reach the tank, 
we had to go about one hundred and fifty yards 
over a perfectly open piece of ground. We moved 
cautiously. We had not gone half way when we 
saw a number of deer scampering away from the 
tank out into the bush. We felt sure other wild 
animals would come to drink. We concealed our- 
selves in two rifle-pits which previous hunters had 
dug in the bank within twenty-five yards of the 
well-tramped drinking place. 

Silent and motionless as the earth itself, we 
lay for half an hour. Then a small herd of ante- 
lopes, perhaps fifty, came softly out of the forest, 
and after looking about in every direction prepared 
to drink. Our larder was well stocked and we 
wanted none of them. 

The sloping approach being narrow, all of the 
pretty creatures could not drink at one time. 
Those which first drank drew back to give place 
to others. Grouped in a bunch on the bank, they 
began to sport and play like so many lambs. 
They were unsuspicious of our presence. What 
little wind there was blew from them to us. The 
interior of our pit was as black as a wolfs throat, 
and we could not be seen. 



154 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

We remained quiet and kept a lookout for the 
coming of beasts of prey. We had thought it pos- 
sible we might get one more shot at a tiger! No 
tiger appeared, but we had better luck still, as we 
secured a much rarer animal that night, one so 

very rare, that not even old Major H had ever 

before seen the like. 

All of the antelopes had now quenched their 
thirst, and the whole herd were sportively gambol- 
ing on the bank in the moonlight. Suddenly 
Stuart and I both noticed a low-crouching black 
object stealing toward them along the almost 
equally black ground. No eye not purposely 
watching would have distinguished it, and to take 
good aim at it was impossible. On and on, like 
an imperceptibly moving ridge of black soil, it 
came, until within twenty feet of the nearest ante- 
lope. Then it stopped, arched up its back a little 
and launched itself by one astounding spring upon 
the animal. The poor creature, with a single 
plaintive bleat, sank to the earth. Its frightened 
companions scurried away. 

Now, in the moonlight, w^e could see the murder- 
ous beast quite plainly. I gave the signal, a low 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 157 

whistle, and we fired. Both bullets passed 
through the black body, yet with cat-like tenacity 
of life, and uttering a hideous cry, it bounded 
aAvay for fully one hundred yards before it 
dropped. 

"What in the world can the animal be?'' asked 




"ARCHED UP ITS BACK." 

Fred, as he stood looking down on the long, lithe 
body. "It's black as a bear, but evidently some 
kind of a cat." 

I w as puzzled. I had never heard of any of the 
great cats of India being hlacl', though in South 
America I had shot a black puma. 

The creature was too heavy to be carried. We 
fastened our rifle slings around its neck and began 
to drag it along the dry ground to camp. We 
wished the others of the party to see it w^hile yet 
in perfect shape The shooting had awakened our 
comrades. Well armed, but only half-dressed, all 



158 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

came hurrying out to see what the midnight fusi- 
lade might mean. 

After minutely examining our prize, Major 

H said: "I congratulate you young fellows. 

You've killed a black leopard! During all my 
years of hunting I've never before seen one, but 
that this is a genuine specimen of that very rare 
animal I have no doubt whatever. It is, except in 
color, precisely like that spotted leopard we killed 
a few days ago." 

"Do you really think it is of the same species?" 
I asked. 

"Identically so, though some naturalists think 
differently," he replied. "The color is a mere 
freak of nature. I have seen white crows, white 
Virginia deer, and in Canada an occasional white 
one among black squirrels. The black color of 
the leopard is a similar freak." 

While looking the beast over next morning, I 
became convinced that the major was right; for, 
in certain lights the characteristic leopard-spots 
could be seen outlined in shape, though not in 
color, everywhere among the beautifully glossy 
fur which, from a deep black on the creature's 




WE COULD SEE THE MURDEROUS BEAST (JUITE PLAINLY 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 161 

back, shaded off to a slate-gray on its under parts. 

Since then I have seen "black leopards" in me- 
nageries, but none of these captives was much 
more like our grand India specimen than is a 
"singed cat" like a royal Bengal tiger I 

This midnight adventure of Fred's and mine 
so thoroughly roused the party that every one 
thought it necessary to have a smoke before again 
turning in. So the big tent was lighted up, pipes 
and cigars produced, and we all sat down on the 
canvas-topped camp stools to enjoy a comfortable 
hour. 

Naturally, the talk fell upon leopards; and after 
several of his brother officers had given us inter- 
esting anecdotes in regard to those beasts, Cap- 
tain Graham, a splendid-looking fellow of thirty- 
five or thereabout, told us of a thrilling experi- 
ence of his own. 

"It was fifteen years ago," he began. "I was 
a griffin (newly-commissioned ensign) then, and 
had come out with a detachment of recruits to 
join my regiment, the Forty-second Highlanders, 
then stationed in the city of Bombay. But on 
landing from the troop-ship and reporting at 



162 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET, 

Headquarters, I found that the company to which 
I had been assigned was just then doing duty at 
Yikar Lake, a dozen or more miles to the north, 
where some important government work was 
being done. 

"I was greener at that time than I am now; was 
very proud of my new uniform and, until laughed 
out of it by my comrades, was fool enough to lug 
my basket-hilted claymore around from morning 
till night. This sword had never been ground to 
a sharp edge, but yet was not altogether useless 
for cutting and thrusting — most fortunately for 
me, as it happened. 

"The weather was frightfully hot at this time — 
often above a hundred degrees in the shade — and 
after sixty-four days of a cool sea-voyage I felt it 
severely; still, being absurdly zealous, I reported 
to my own captain as quickly as palanquin bearers 
could carry me to his quarters. I was most gra- 
ciously welcomed, principally, I presume, because 
I had brought many home letters for him and his 
subs. 

"At the mess dinner that evening all the officers 
and their guests wore their linen or nankeen; but 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 163 

I stuck to my gorgeous uniform, which made me 
look like a peacock amid a flock of white swans. 
And oh, the heat! It w^as something terrible. 
The profuse perspiration oozed from every pore. 

"Noticing my distress, the captain kindly said: 
^Don't make a martyr of yourself, Mr. Graham, but 
leave us without ceremony. Go to your room 
and let your man give you a hot bath; then get 
into the coolest things you have.' 

"A hot bath, indeed. That did seem to my inex- 
perience rather too ridiculous. But I gladly ex- 
cused myself, and leaving the mess-room went out 
into the open air — uniform, claymore and all! 

"Instead of taking the captain's advice, I started 
off to the lake and, after getting beyond all sounds 
from the barracks, sat down under a tamarind 
tree, hoping to get cool in the course of time. 
Then, while idly wondering whether any sane be- 
ing ever really did take a hot bath in such weather, 
it occurred to me that I might as well have a plunge 
in the lake, whose w ater was certainly several de- 
grees lower in temperature than my own over- 
heated body. 

"So, with no onlooker save the full moon, so far 



164 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

as I knew, I threw off m^^ clothing and dashed 
recklessly in, only to come more hurriedly out; 
for I had not made five strokes when I saw a huge 
crocodile coming at me with wide-open jaw^s! 
I had totally forgotten that such creatures were 
almost as common in that latitude as trout are in 
our Highland lochs. 

"Hastily scrambling ashore, I had stooped to 
take up one of my garments when low on the 
ground, between two small bushes, about twelve 
feet away, I saw the murderous glare of a pair of 
yellow-green eyes and caught a shadowy glimpse 
of their OAvner's spotted hide ! 

"Of course I had not grown to man's estate 
without having many times seen leopards in me- 
nageries; and I realized at once that here was a 
genuine wild one, evidently bent on trying the 
flavor of a tender, newly-imported European. I 
didn't pick up my clothes — not just then — but, in- 
stead, snatched up and drcAv from its sheath my 
claymore; whether it was a "trusty" one or not I 
had as yet no means of knowing. 

"I was in rather a pretty fix — a gaping croco- 
dile, perhaps a dozen crocodiles, on one side, and 



GREAT CAT is I HAVE MET. 1G5 

a hungry leopard on the other, being for a modest 
young man, clothed only with a naked sword, a 
somewhat embarrassing conjunction of circum- 
stances. But I was a fairly strong fellow in those 
days and didn't feel much alarmed. My chief con- 
cern was that my maiden sword should meet its 
first stain from the blood of such a foe. Yet, after 
all, the weapon could surely be put to no better 
use than in defending the life of its owner! 

"Thus, for perhaps twenty seconds, I and the 
leopard gazed at each other, and I began to think 
that the brute would not dare to attack me — not 
then knowing that it was a female, with two half- 
grown cubs, both killed next day. 

"If I had been more elaborately clothed, I might 
have walked away, or tried to; but as it was I 
stooped once more and reached out my left hand, 
intending to grasp part of my apparel. This 
might well have proved a fatal move; for the in- 
stant I lowered my head and the glittering sword 
the leopard made a tremendous upward leap, and 
but for my watchfulness would have descended 
upon my bare back! 

"I had never, however, removed my eyes from 



166 GREAT GATS I HAVE MET. 

the creature, and quickly straightening up I 
lunged with all my strength at its open mouth as 
it came down. The not very sharp-pointed blade 
drove along its throat and came out between its 
shoulders, piercing, as I afterwards found, the 
heart itself! The big cat was not yet dead, how- 
ever. The impetus of its attack bore me down, 
and we came to the ground together, though, as I 
had kept fast hold of my sword-hilt and thus could 
hold the beast off, I did not receive a scratch from 
its sharp claws, which for a moment or two were 
fiercely plied in a vain attempt to reach my out- 
stretched hand. 

"So soon as I thought it safe to do so, I withdrew 
the sword-blade and with a single downright 
stroke laid open the leopard's skull, not being 
aware as yet that I had already mortally 
wounded it. 

"After cleansing my claymore in the lake, I 
dressed and went back to the mess-room, where 
the company still sat at dessert. On seeing the 
sword by my side, my captain laughingly ex- 
claimed: ^Good heavens, boy! what are you carry- 
ing that thing around for?' 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 167 

"IVe found it quite useful," I quietly replied, 
and notwithstanding a hundred eager inquiries, 
would say no more. And it was not until next 
morning that the mystery was solved, much to the 
surprise of my comrades, none of whom had ever 
seen a leopard in the neighborhood. All the fel- 
lows went out to the scene of my little adventure, 
with the servants who w^ere sent to bring the 
leopard in, and it was then that the two cubs were 
discovered and killed." 

"Well, you had rare luck," said Fred Stuart 
after Graham's story was finished. Then we all 
climbed into our hammocks, to sleep the remain- 
der of the night away. 



CHAPTER XII. 

TWO GIRLS AND A TORTOISE-SHELL TIGER. 

ON leaving Calcutta, I went to Sumatra, one of 
the largest islands of the East Indian Archi- 
pelago. Near the southern point of the island, a 
few miles inland from Sunda Strait, there lived at 
this time two American families named Gordon 
and Whitney. The Gordons had but one child, 
a fine manly boy of fifteen. The Whitneys had 
two charming little girls, Ethel and Am3\ 

I became acquainted with both these families, 
but found that although their homes were sepa- 
rated only by a wide bayou neither knew of the 
other's existence, owing to the fact of their recent 
arrival in the country. 

The pleasant task of introduction was taken out 
of my hands in a rather singular manner. One 
day the two little Whitney girls slipped aw^ay 
from their attendant and strolled nearly a mile 

168 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 169 

from home. Tliej were gathering flowers along 
the edge of a bridle-path which ran through a 
grove of sago palms, when they were so startled 
by the sudden appearance of a horseman, who 
came around the bend on a gallop, that both cried 
out in fright. 

The rider, a bright-faced boy, carrying a light 
rifle and bestriding a beautiful Arab mare, in- 
stantly drew up. Lifting his hat to the children 
he said, "I beg pardon, young ladies. I did not 
see you at all. My name is Frank Gordon, and my 
father^s coffee plantation is about six miles from 
here, on the other side of the big bayou." 

"O, we're not a bit frightened now," said Ethel. 
"We are Mrs. Whitney's little girls. Our papa 
and mama lives close to here. We were just pick- 
ing some of these flowers; they are so different 
from those we had in the United States." 

While the child was speaking, Frank removed 
his hat entirely, and when she had finished he 
bowed to them once more and rode away. 

"What a nice polite boy, and he spoke English, 
too! not that horrid Dutch and Malay we hear 
every day," exclaimed Ethel. 



170 GREAT CATS I HAYE MET, 

"Yes, and he called us young ladies!" chimed in 
little Amy. 

"Well, we are young ladies. I'm ten and you're 
nine," sagely replied Ethel. "I do wish we could 
have had a longer look at his lovely horse! 1 
don't suppose we'll ever see him again" — wherein 
the little maid w^as greatly mistaken. 

After a w^hile the children left the path. 
Always finding something new, they strayed 
deeper into the wood. As they came in sight of a 
giant cactus, growing in a small cleared space, 
Amy cried out, "Oh, sister, see that curious-look- 
ing dog right there beside the cactus! He's got a 
pretty red bird and he's going to eat it. Let's go 
and make him drop it !" 

Then the two innocents walked straight 
toward a full-grown tortoise-shell tiger, a species 
of cat found only in Sumatra. The natives call 
it "rimau-dahan." It is nearly as large as a leop- 
ard, but its head is more like that of a domestic 
cat, and it is not ordinarily as fierce and danger- 
ous as the leopard. Its markings are curious, 
somewhat resembling both those of the true tiger 
and leopard, yet not like either; but a strange ad- 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 



171 



mixture of tiger-stripes, leopard-spots and hollow 
disc-like patches. The ground color of the fur is 
ashy-gray. Along the back run two glossy black 
bands. The tail is very long, with dark rings. 
Its limbs are thick and powerful, and its teeth and 
talons Ions: and 



It gener- 



sharp. 
ally preys, I was 
told, upon birds, 
monkeys, young 
deer and other 
weak creatures. 
When the 




got 



BEGAN TO LEAP AND FRISK ABOUT. 



little girls 

close to the "dog," Ethel said: "Why, Amy, that is 
not a dog at all! See how its hair is bristling and 
its tail puflSng out, just like our cat when she's 
angry; and oh! it's beginning to snarl and spit! 
Let's run !" 

So soon as the children turned to fl}^, the rimau- 
dahan, which would itself have run awa}^ the next 
moment, took courage and with a long, light 
bound pounced upon them, knocking both down 
to the ground with two taps of its padded paws,. 



172 GREAT CATS J HAVE MET, 

the formidable talons being, as jet, closely 
sheathed. Then, seeming to be delighted with 
such novel prey, the sportive creature began to 
leap and frisk about, exactly as does a domestic 
cat when tantalizing a mouse. Sometimes, after 
crouching low, it would spring clear over the pros- 
trate little ones. Then it would lie down with a 
paw upon each and loudly purr. After that it 
would roll them gently over and over, perhaps 
wondering what their outside wear, neither fur 
nor feathers, could possibly be. 

At first the poor children were so frightened 
that they could not cry out. But soon both began 
to scream: "Papa! papa! papa! Come, oh, come 
quick!'' 

Their cries seemed to make the big cat angry; 
it began to handle its prisoners a little more 
roughly, to protrude its claws and catch hold of 
their clothes whenever they attempted to get up. 

Their danger was truly terrible. This strange 
situation had lasted, Ethel thought, about fifteen 
minutes; she and Amy, exhausted by screaming, 
lay silently clasped in each other's arms, and the 
"tiger," no longer irritated by their cries, was 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 173 

standing a few feet away, watching them. Sud- 
denly, swift as a falcon's flight, Frank Gordon and 
his trained Arab burst from the encircling wood, 
and before the beast could escape rode straight 
over it, hurling it, now screeching with rage, to 
the ground ! 

By the time the horse and rider had checked 
their headlong speed, the cow ed cat had sprung 
into the crotch of a tree. This was precisely what 
Frank wanted. He had feared to fire while it was 
so close to the little girls. Now, still sitting in 
the saddle, he raised his rifle, took a deliberate 
aim, and tumbled the creature, stone-dead, to the 
ground. 

The next moment he was helping the children 
to their feet. Beyond some tearino- and soiliuir of 
their dainty frocks, the little girls were none the 
worse for their dangerous adyenture — eyery word 
of which Ethel told, when Frank had taken them 
home, yery much as I haye described it, for I hap- 
pened to be at Mr. Whitney's house when the trio 
got in. 

Of course, after this eyent, the Gordons and 
Whitneys were always warm friends and I be- 



174 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

lieve the three children, now middle-aged people^ 
still reside on the island of Sumatra. 

As I had never before seen a "rimau-dahan" 
(the compound word means, I believe, a climber of 
forked trees), I was anxious to secure the beauti- 
ful pelt. I offered Frank an absurdly big price for 
it, but he declared, "no money could buy it" — very 
properly, too, considering the circumstances at- 
tending its acquisition. 

Before leaving the island, however, I was lucky 
enough myself to kill a particularly fine tortoise- 
shell tiger, and I yet have its pelt, with head, tail 
and claws complete. Having been carefully pro- 
tected from moths, the fur after all these years is 
still bright, and its spots, rings and stripes show 
quite plainl3\ I came by the beautiful cat which 
they once adorned in a very simple and uneventful 
manner. 

Although an almost infinite variety of wild 
birds exist in Sumatra, Mr. Whitney had brought 
with him from America several pairs of choice 
domestic fowls, and these had now increased to a 
considerable flock, in which he took much pride, 
as a reminder of his former home. 




FRANK GORDON AND RT9 TRArVET) ARAB BURST FROM THE ENCIRCLING WOOD. 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 177 

One evening, after our six o'clock tea, he asked 
me to come out with him to look at the pretty 
things, their yard and roosting place being not far 
from the house. As we neared the enclosure, sur- 




IN THE TREE 



rounded by a light open paling, a fat, jolly-looking 
Dutch woman who had carried out some boiled 
rice for the chickens' supper came running to 
meet us, excitedly exclaiming, "Mynheer! myn- 
heer!" and then followed a torrent of mixed Dutch 
and English; I could recognize only the oft- 
repeated word, "tiger." 

"She says," interpreted Mr. Whitney, laughing 
heartily at my perplexity, "that a spotted tiger 
has just run into that clump of ironwood saplings 
with the handsomest of all the game roosters in 
his mouth. He had scaled the fence, it seems; for 



178 GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 

the moment she opened the gate the beast clashed 
past her with its prey." 

"It must be another rimau-dahan!" I exclaimed. 
And back to the house I scampered for my rifle, 
as both of us were quite unarmed. 

Then we began a careful search of the grove — 
a mere two-acre patch of second-growth trees 
which, however, grew so close together that the 
grove's interior was strangely dark though the 
sun was yet considerably more than an hour high. 

After crossing and recrossing the thicket in all 
directions without seeing anything but monkeys 
and parrots, I said, "Let us lie down and keep per- 
fectly still, as we used to do sometimes when 
squirrel-hunting in America." (Fve had red and 
black squirrels, and even coons and rabbits, 
actually run over me while playing this trick.) 

"A good idea," said my host. "Maybe the 
chicken-thief will betray his whereabouts." 

So we stretched ourselves, face up, on the 
ground and remained for some fifteen minutes mo- 
tionless and silent as two logs. By-and-by, as we 
stared placidly upward at such glimpses of the 
sky as were visible from our position, there came 



GREAT CATS I HAVE MET. 179 

fluttering down, straight above our own face, two 
or three yellowish-red feathers! 

"We've found the rascal; he's beginning to pick 
his prize!" Mr. Whitney whispered. And, sure 
enough, on looking keenly up at the spot whence 
the telltale feathers came, I saw the marauder 
humped up on a limb and holding the stolen bird 
between his forepaws. In another second, shot 
through the head, he tumbled down, almost on top 
of us; and then— being young at that time— I 
joyfully yelled: "It is a rimau-dahan, and a bigger 
one than Frank Gordon killed!" 

Gretchen, the Dutch hen-wife, was much de- 
lighted by the great cat's destruction, but I never 
saw another tortoise-shell tiger. 



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